


sarah smiles (ever since we met)

by sidnihoudini



Category: Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Divorce, Established Relationship, F/M, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-03-22 16:40:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 43,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3736084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidnihoudini/pseuds/sidnihoudini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loving Ryan had been everything: a sinking ship, a mudslide, a boat caught in the storm. As Brendon grew up, he realized that there was an eye to every storm, and now, he knows that Sarah had been his. It’s not hard to see that there’s another wall of raging weather right around the corner. Ryan brings rain and snow and the hottest bouts of sun that Brendon has ever felt. That’s why he will always buy a ticket, even knowing what he knows now. He will always be prepared to set sail and travel the moment that Ryan breezes back into his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. mad as rabbits

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this over a year ago!

Sarah has their two-year-old on one hip, and one hand wrist deep in a sink full of dirty dishwater when she finally tells Brendon, “I think I want a separation.”

Up until now it had been a typical morning - waking up with their backs to one another in their double bed, Brendon had first shower while she attended to their son, and then they had switched until she’d come down the living room stairs in yoga pants and a sweater.

He’d gone out for a smoke, watching the back neighbor’s dog run back and forth along the chain link fence that separated the two yards, driven by nothing but plain indecision.

“James, bottle,” Sarah had called from inside the kitchen at one point, and Brendon had turned just in time to watch their toddler stagger away from where one of his fat little hands had been pressed up against the glass patio door. 

Then he’d exhaled smoke over his opposite shoulder, ashed his cigarette into the tray on the glass patio table, and looked away.

Now, in a moment where everything is changing, Brendon looks up from the Google search page he had half-heartedly been typing _road trip routes route 66_ into, and accidentally locks eyes with his son, who is staring at him over Sarah’s shoulder.

“Babe,” He says, but it’s cold, it’s empty, it’s what you say when your wife of four years asks you for divorce, a good word to attach a plea to, something to start a monologue full of promises and one-sided compromises.

Sarah’s hand comes out of the lukewarm sink water, the quiet sound of breaking as she exhales and her shoulders visibly slump, James’ head leaning an inch further to the side where he rests his ear on her warm skin.

She leans against the counter top, hard.

“Please don’t,” She says to the window over the sink, the window they had held hands and gazed through the day they first walked through the house, laughing and overwhelmed with the future, the wedding, their upcoming life together.

Brendon blinks, pulling his glasses off, rubbing his fingers against his eyes, hard. Hard enough to see spots when he looks at the white tile that separates he and his wife - the white tiles that could be anything from indifference to falling out of love to something deeper, something that has nothing to do with choice at all.

“You’ll stay in Los Angeles?” He asks, leaning his elbow against the table top, and then his chin against the same hand. Shaking.

Turning around to face him finally, finally, Sarah kisses the top of James’ soft head and nods.

“Okay,” He whispers to himself, to both of them, his hands going back to his face.

~

Pete isn’t necessarily surprised when Brendon shows up at his front door, but he is nice enough to look moderately startled at least, as his eyebrows jerk up into his hairline, and he holds the door open wider, letting Brendon in.

“Thanks,” Brendon says quietly, dropping the duffel bag from each hand just inside of the front hallway. Still bent over, adjusting the bags, he glances down the long entry hallway, and then up at Pete before he asks, “Patrick home?”

Shaking his head, Pete closes the door behind the two of them, eyes still trained on the bags.

“He’s in Chicago until tomorrow. You okay, man?” He touches Brendon’s elbow with his free hand, the other taken up with a television remote, fingers wrapped loosely around the well worn black plastic.

Brendon blinks a few times, and then smiles widely, a pulse of teeth, stretched lips, and then it fades. “Don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Oh,” Pete says, oh, as a flash of something flickers across his face, because he’s lived through this moment with Brendon before. This moment where he and Ashlee had welcomed him into their then-home, and he had slept in the living room with Hemingway during the day, and partied and cried and wrote and forgot as much as he could during the night.

Pete pats his shoulder again, warmer this time, and points down the bright, LA-tan and dark wooden floor with the hand holding the TV remote.

“Well come on in, man, I got some pizza on the way,” He says, kicking Bronx’s plastic toys out of the way before he follows Brendon down the hallway.

~

From the three people Brendon has built romantic relationships with, three have broken his heart.

Socked feet kicked up against the suede footrest in Pete’s living room, Brendon rests his half empty beer bottle against the line of his hip, and contemplates the television screen flickering in front of them.

Pete is the worst for flipping channels right when something gets going good, and tonight is no different, as he changes channels as a reality show comes back from commercial, and then a talk show right as a surprise guest is announced.

Eyes heavy, Brendon blinks, and opens his eyes to a new channel, a new world it might as well be, full of flickering empty fields and advertisements for bachelor’s cleaning services and how to help a child cope with having divorced parents.

“Am I really that unlikeable?” He asks out of nowhere, eyes suddenly blurry with tears as he laughs awkwardly and brings the back of his hand up to wipe his nose, the weight of a tour bus slamming into his chest as he leans forward and almost drops his beer on the floor between his feet.

Pete jerks forward, too, alarmed, kicking an empty beer bottle over with his foot as he leans forward, one arm already stretched out to rest around Brendon’s shoulders. Brendon’s shoulders, shaking, chest heaving as the rhythm of his breathing becomes impossible to control.

“What?” Pete asks. Pete three years ahead of him, Pete is in the air while Brendon is barefoot on the ground, Pete is out of his element and they both know it.

If Brendon was Pete five years ago, he would be drunk on-stage, bass lifeless in his hands as he knelt between two amps, dead behind the eyes and gazing out over the crowd.

“I married her,” Brendon says, rocking forward to press the curve of both thumbs up against his forehead, eyes closed, head angled like he’s in prayer. “It didn’t even matter.”

Pete is petting the nape of his neck, trying to help.

“Hey man, it’s alright, come on,” He says, not helping. He falls silent, and Brendon rolls his head to the side, eye opening, Pete is never silent. Pete usually never runs out of retarded, vaguely offending shit to say. He frowns. “I know what you’re going through right now, and I don’t know what else to do other than say it’ll be alright.”

They hold eye contact for a moment, Pete’s words hanging in the air between them, unsaid but barely unspoken: I know what you’re going through right now, because I married the first girl that I saw after him, too.

“That’s different,” Brendon manages to say, wiping his nose again. Pete rubs the back of his neck one more time before the touch fades away. “That’s different and we both know it.”

Frowning, Pete watches as Brendon gets up to get another beer, one hand still wiping the tears away from his eyes.

~

The sun is in his eyes when he wakes up the next morning with his body glued to the leather couch, and the sound of Patrick’s voice drifting from the kitchen in his ears.

“That’s a lot of orange juice,” Patrick is saying, laughing kind of, before Pete’s awkward, loud laugh cuts through Patrick’s, the sound of murmured words, and then Patrick amending, “I’m not saying anything, I’m just saying - that’s a lot of orange juice.”

Brendon rubs a hand over his eyes and starts the process of sitting up. The twelve pack he and Pete shared last night now decorates the coffee table, the floor, one forgotten, empty bottle resting on the fireplace mantle.

He reaches forward and snags the sock that must have come off his foot in the middle of the night off of the carpet. The carpet is expensive and cream colored, an obvious upgrade in the otherwise cookie cutter LA mansion. Brendon’s stomach flip-flops at the thought of Pete and Patrick sitting at the kitchen island in Pete’s old condo, going over what their house would look like when they finally - finally - moved in with one another.

“Hey man,” Pete says, coming into the living room with a glass in one hand and a piece of toast in the other. He crunches into it and says, “I was just gonna come wake you up for breakfast. Patrick’s making food.”

Brendon nods and forces a smile, tugs the sock back onto his foot and stands up.

“Sounds great,” He says, following Pete into the kitchen.

Patrick’s got his back to the door when he walks in, still rubbing the sleep off of his face, trying to shake it out of his posture. Pete immediately goes back to his spot at the kitchen table, laptop opened and email half gone through, iPhone at his elbow, a stack of something that looks like art proofs on his other side.

When Brendon showed up last night he clearly interrupted a normal day in the Wentz-Stump household.

There’s a sizzle from the pan and Patrick side-steps, reaching forward to turn the heat down before he glances over his shoulder and raises his eyebrows at Brendon, “Hey man, you like your eggs scrambled or fried?”

“Fried, lots of salt,” Brendon sighs, sitting down opposite Pete. Pete raises his eyebrows at him over the line of his laptop. “Salsa, if you have it.”

Patrick laughs because one of them has to, and says, “Death by sodium. Not a bad way to go.”

“Drowning,” Pete supplements, opening his mouth wide enough to angle the remaining half a slice of toast into. He crunches, and spits crumbs out as he adds, “That’s the way to do it.”

Grabbing a couple of plates from the glass cupboard over the counter, Patrick sends Pete a glare over the kitchen island that is easily translated into: ten years later, suicide jokes are still not funny.

Pete raises his eyebrows and smiles at Brendon over the table.

“Here you go,” Patrick says a minute later, sliding a plate full of fried eggs, veggies and meat across the island counter top and in Brendon’s general direction. “Salsa’s in the fridge, if you really want it.”

Brendon stretches across the walkway that separates the table from the island and grabs the plate with one handed, stretching his other arm extra far to grab a piece of cutlery from where they’re in a pile by a chopping board full of vegetable ends.

“Thanks, man, this looks awesome,” Brendon says, setting it in front of him on the tabletop before he stands up to head to the fridge. Patrick doesn’t seem to be treating him any differently than a normal hungover day-after, and Brendon wonders if Pete even mentioned anything about he and Sarah at all. The words get stuck on his tongue so he asks, “How was your flight?” instead.

Patrick loads a plate up for himself and eats it behind the island, leaning against the kitchen counter behind him. He’s wearing flannel pajama pants and an old t-shirt, hair damp, and he looks tired but not exhausted.

“Delayed, as usual. I was supposed to be back last night,” He shrugs, poking his fork around his breakfast plate held on the palm of one hand. Brendon grabs the salsa, ketchup, and, as an afterthought, a bottle of water, and closes the refrigerator door. “I wrote a couple new melodies waiting, though, so that was alright.”

Settling back down at the table, Brendon nods his head once, “Nice.”

They both work on their breakfasts, the sound of forks clinking against ceramic dishware, a car alarm going off outside, Patrick’s cell phone vibrating against the front hallway table. Halfway through Brendon’s eggs, Pete reaches between them for his archaic, crappy set of headphones, and slides them over his head.

“So,” Patrick says, setting down his breakfast plate to start coffee. “Are you okay?”

Brendon’s fork slows down, and even though he can hear sound coming out of Pete’s headphones, he swears he sees Pete glance at him over the top of his laptop.

“It… it’s just, complicated I guess,” He manages to say, glancing over at Patrick before he presses the plate away from him, a few inches further into the middle of the table. Patrick is filling the coffee maker with water, glancing over at Brendon carefully. “I was under the delusion that once you get married, that’s it. You don’t break up.”

Nodding, Patrick bites his lip, and slides the pot back into the coffee maker.

“Were you surprised?” Patrick asks, and coming from anyone else’s mouth it would have been unkind, damned near mean, but from Patrick, it almost sounds introspective.

Brendon reaches for his water bottle, damp label already peeling at the edges.

“No,” He says, honestly. A beat, a blink, a breath, and then he says, “She caught me on Grindr a few months ago. Our marriage has been falling apart for - ”

Pete’s headphones fly off and he interrupts, voice surprised, “Grindr!?”

“Yeah,” Brendon nods, as Patrick chokes and says ‘Pete,’ and he can’t help but chuckle a little as he pinches the bridge of his nose, stomach curdling in embarrassment. “Not my finest moment.”

Pete’s still goggling at him, eyebrows raised, “Grindr.”

“I didn’t…” Trailing off, Brendon feels a blush creep its way across his cheeks as he looks at Patrick out of the corner of his eyes, and then back at Pete. “I didn’t cheat on her, or anything.”

Pete holds his hands out palm up, like he’s saying ‘you don’t have to explain to me,’ but Brendon does, Brendon will have to explain to everyone soon enough that he isn’t that guy, that fucked up ex-Mormon who will happily marry his wife while fucking anything with a dick that comes across his path.

“Everything will work out, man,” Patrick finally says, coming over to pat him on the shoulder a couple of times, his hand warm and curved against the wrinkled arm of his t-shirt. “It always does. You know you can stay here for as long as you need.”

Brendon nods, blinking, staring at a piece of mail poking out from beneath Pete’s stack of proofs that is addressed to P STUMP.

“I really appreciate it,” He says, and for once in his recent life, he sounds like he means it.

~

Pete does the breakfast dishes, wearing the bulky headphones around his neck as he moves around the kitchen, nodding his head to the crappy, tinny sound that spills out from inside. The cord goes down and into the back pocket of his jeans, and every few steps he snags it on something new - the drawer handle, an edge of the counter, his own thumb.

He’s got his own system going on, so Brendon leaves him to it, instead stacking the condiments back into the refrigerator before he wanders back to the living room, sitting back down in the same spot he woke up.

Sarah’s texted him a photo of James with Cheerios stuck all over his face, and he texts back a happy smiley face without thinking too much of it. Dallon wanted to know if Brendon was going for breakfast around 8 AM - he replies with a _slept one off this morning man sorry_ instead of saying something like _my wife finally left me._

Patrick comes back down from upstairs with real clothes on, disappearing back into the kitchen before he sees Brendon on the couch. Within ten seconds he’s bitching about Pete wearing the headphones while he’s doing the dishes - use the wireless speakers instead, man, jesus.

Settling back into the couch, Brendon smirks a fraction and looks at the entertainment center sitting opposite him, at the photos stacked on either side of the widescreen TV, metal and glass music awards, the odd collector’s vinyl toy. A real life built together.

Before Patrick, Pete had Jeanae, and after her, Ashlee.

Jeanae had been the Wendy Darling to his Peter Pan, two real basket cases, and then Ashlee was the golden glitter to his Hollywood crown, the last act of a man desperate to save himself from something that was as much of a part of him as his fame.

Brendon remembers both of them - Ashlee more so than Jeanae, though Jeanae had been more memorable, screaming at Pete in the silence of a glittering, dark gas station parking lot while everyone else ducked inside to buy powdered donuts and cigarettes.

He remembers Patrick sitting up most nights, headphones on his ears, the collar of his jacket pulled tightly around his face, sneakers on even though he was only sitting in the bus lounge.

Fully dressed, like he was ready to run at any given moment.

Ashlee had been different, couldn’t have actually been any different from Jeanae. Tanned skin, a wide smile, cautious in opinion when surrounded by people she didn’t know.

For all intents and purposes, Brendon realizes he actually liked Ashlee. Only problem was that she wasn’t Patrick.

Brendon has had a Jeanae, and her name was Audrey. 

Calling her a firecracker would be an understatement, with her slight Jersey accent and penchant for face paint and boys underwear. They had broken up in the middle of a tour, it had been monolithic, the relationship exploding in their faces, shrapnel taking out whoever was unlucky enough to stand around them.

Sarah hadn’t been until years later. She had been his Ashlee: pretty, intelligent, the whole package, just totally fucking gorgeous from the inside out.

That was the problem in and of itself: his Jeanae, his Ashlee. Both had made him damned near catatonic near the end, a quivering mess of chain-smoking cigarettes and fondly recalling the past.

Meanwhile, his past, his Patrick, his beginning of everything had been Ryan all along. Who, unfortunately, was someone that he hadn’t seen, much less spoken to, in years.

Brendon tightens his fingers around the body of his iPhone until it almost hurts.

“I’m going out, you wanna come with?” Patrick asks, in the door frame all of a sudden, slight and small and already tugging a jacket over his shoulders.

Brendon's fingers loosen, he scrubs his face instead, and says, “Yeah, just let me change real quick first.”

~

He tags along while Patrick does errands, falling into step beside him easily.

Patrick and him, they’ve always been the similar ones. Similar as in not broken.

They talk about the new record Patrick is producing for an up-and-coming Fueled by Ramen band, the show he and Pete went to see in New York a few weeks ago, and the fact that Christmas is coming up right around the bend.

Brendon holds the door open for them when they pick up a box from the post office, compares vinyl finds when they drop by the record store, and leans up against the glass display case when Patrick stops at a deli to buy a dozen bagels, making hand gestures because he can’t remember the word ‘sesame seeds.’

In Patrick’s car, they listen to Come on Eileen and Brendon cracks up laughing for the first time in days at Patrick’s seat dancing, head banging so hard his hat falls off, moving his hands enough that one of his thumbs catches the seatbelt and jerks it against his neck, causing him to swear and laugh and almost rear-end the car in front of them.

Brendon screams “too-ra-loo-ra, too-ra-loo-rye-aye” until something in his chest breaks open and he’s laughing again, legs kicking out into the footwell with one arm out the window as he and Patrick accelerate down the highway, Patrick still grinning as he adjusts his hat.

It’s exactly what he needed, and he doesn’t realize it until the moment has come and gone.

~

He’s sitting on the Wentz-Stump patio later that afternoon, smoking a Parliament and debating the universe when Sarah calls him.

“I just wanted to make sure that you were okay,” She says, and if that isn’t indicative of her core character than nothing else is.

Brendon exhales through his nose and smiles a little despite the situation. In the background, he can hear James babbling before he shrieks and something plastic hits the floor.

“I could be worse,” He says honestly, thinking of himself drunk and passed out in a gutter somewhere, his belongings in the trunk of his car or the foot of a cheap motel bed frame. “I could definitely be better.”

She laughs a little bit under her breath, understanding, and says, “Yeah, I’m with you there.”

“You know I love you, right?” He blurts, ashing his cigarette. He thinks of her warm skin and kind eyes and the way she takes care of James no matter what.

His mother was the same, but he knows that not everybody’s was.

“I know you do,” She says softly, not unkindly. “I love you, too, Brendon you know that. But this, our whole…”

She trails off, lacking the words, and he nods to nobody in particular, pushing his glasses up at the bridge of his nose.

“Our whole thing,” He supplies, then sighs. “Fucked that up, huh?”

That startles a real laugh out of her - it’s sharp and loud in the phone, before there’s a shuffle sound like she’s switching ears, and then replies, voice amused, “There’s the guy I married.”

“Yeah,” He sighs, grinning.

Pete cracks open the back door and pokes his head out when Brendon is ashing again. His eyebrows are halfway up his forehead, and he absently turns another set of lights on, lamps flooding down along the far edge of the path, illuminating Brendon’s feet.

“You wanna go out for a drink?” He asks, holding himself inside of the house with one hand on either side of the door frame.

Brendon butts his cigarette out, and nods, holding up one hand to gesture to the phone. Pete gives a thumbs up and then quietly slides back inside, letting the patio door swing to a close behind him.

“Pete wants to go out for a drink,” He tells Sarah, out of habit more than anything.

She makes an agreeable noise, saying, “Say hi to him for me, I don’t want to…” and then trails off as Brendon says ‘no, yeah, of course.’ She clears her throat and then laughs, the moment of awkwardness palpable between the two of them - they have definitely seen better days.

“Kiss James for me,” He says, an afterthought, just Sarah says, ‘well, I better,’ and then ‘yeah, I will.’ Brendon presses a hand to his forehead, stomach twisting as he tries to navigate the accidentally stilted conversation. “Okay, bye then, goodnight.”

There’s a breath of a moment before she replies, “Goodnight,” and then silence.

Brendon leans back in his chair and looks at the foggy, dark blue Los Angeles sky.

He definitely prefers an awkward divorce over a belligerent one, but not by much.

“Hey man, cab’s here,” Pete calls through the kitchen window, and just like that Brendon is up and out of his chair, and heading in the direction Pete earlier disappeared from.

~

They go to one of Pete’s favorite spots, which ends up being a little dark, a little grungy, a little gay, and a lot Pete.

“You and Patrick are happy, huh?” He asks over two beers and two jack and cokes, his fingers cradled around the condensation of his bottle, thumbs rubbing at the peeling label.

Pete makes a face like ‘you have no idea’ and then adds, “Yeah it just took what, like fifteen years to get here?”

“I guess so,” Brendon frowns, looking down at the mouth of his bottle. He glances up at Pete without having to fully look at him, and asks, “You don’t think I should be fighting this, do you?”

Without a beat, Pete shakes his head.

“I don’t. Look at me, man, I fought that same shit for a year,” He looks troubled for a half-second, reflecting down into his drink not unlike Brendon just a moment before. He looks back up at Brendon after a beat, eyes serious, gaze warm. “Nothing I could have done would have changed the way things ended up. You can’t change who you are. Not that part of you.”

Brendon frowns, thumbing the lip of his bottle. “Funny how it still seems like a good idea at the time, huh?”

“You have no idea,” Pete laughs, swigging his beer. He shakes his head and swallows, wiping at his mouth with the pad of his thumb. “Through everything, like, Jeanae and the marriage and Bronx and - you know, whatever. It always came back to Patrick. Even when he wasn’t around, he was always my moral compass. When I closed my eyes, he was pretty much the person who was there.”

Watching Pete’s face, Brendon asks, voice quiet, “Just that simple, huh? You knew?”

“Oh yeah, that little fucker,” Pete laughs now, his voice loud enough that it sounds a tone different than his regular speaking voice. “Totally insidious. All that shit about soulmates? Like, yeah, whatever, man - that’s it, that’s him. You can’t fight that stuff.”

Brendon smiles, kind of, just a pull of his lips as he considers Pete’s statement, almost resigned to the fact that he would just have to deal with living with someone who was potentially created as his universal equal for the rest of his life. 

What a chore, to live a life like that.

“Hey, man,” Pete starts off, licking his lips, twisting his beer bottle around in a circle on the table, really unable to meet Brendon’s eyes. He squints, looking up at Brendon, who’s stomach drops when he realizes what Pete’s about to ask. “Do you ever talk to him anymore?”

The taste of salt in his mouth, waves crashing against his skin and fresh air to breathe.

“No,” He says, voice stilted. He drinks half of his beer without meaning to. He debates lighting a cigarette right here in the bar. He can’t look Pete in the eye, one foot bouncing underneath the table, his knee moving up and down. Without meaning to, without even trying at all, he asks, sharp and pained, “You?”

Pete’s silent for a moment, watching the physical reaction Brendon has had without meaning to - the fingers on one hand opening and closing where his wrist rests against the table top.

“Every now and then,” Pete supplies, voice quiet. He brings his beer bottle up to his lips, and then snorts under his breath, “That Shane dude or whatever, he’s really not…”

Brendon nods, “Yeah.”

“Patrick doesn’t like him very much,” Pete finally says, ever the diplomat, and takes a long swig of his beer, trying not to notice as Brendon finishes his drink off in a few long gulps.

Nodding, Brendon takes a deep breath and says, “Patrick and I would be in the same company, then.”

“I could give him your new number or something,” Pete shrugs, one hand up in the air for the waitress as she passes by a few tables to their right. 

Brendon reaches for his rum and coke.

“I would definitely rather you didn’t,” He says, and means it.

~

To him, Ryan was everything.

He was the sun, the stars, the moon and the universe that they were created in. Ryan was the train that finally came after waiting in the cold for twenty minutes, the beep on the microwave when all you wanted was food after a long day, and the feeling you had when you finally got into bed at night.

For one bump in the universe’s timeline, Ryan was home, Ryan was family, and Ryan was his.

Now, in the bar bathroom, Brendon splashes cold tap water over his face, and stares at himself in the mirror. Maybe in some alternate universe, someone like him and someone like Ryan did end up together. Maybe they were happy, maybe everything worked.

But that wasn’t here. That was on the alternate planes of the dreams Brendon pretended he didn’t sometimes have, and they had nothing to do with reality.

Pete didn’t get it. He and Patrick had magic and chemicals keeping them together or some shit. Brendon has eight years of treating Ryan like Beetlejuice, cautious to never say his name out loud, because god forbid someone else ever put two and two together and realize that they ever knew one another at all.

Shaking his head, Brendon dries his hands off on the thighs of his pants, and sets his shoulders straight.

 _Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice,_ he thinks, and yanks the bathroom door open.

~

The next morning, Brendon makes a Vine after three weeks of radio silence, checks his email, and sends Spencer a few texts about ideas for a new demo. Spencer’s been good the last few years, really good, back on his feet and well adjusted enough to fight without the fear of failing.

 _lunch tomorrow gurl,_ Brendon texts, mouth trembling as he tries to keep himself from smiling when he adds an open mouthed emoticon, and a peach that looks like a butt. He and Spencer have this game where they constantly try to one-up one another in sexual harassment via text, which he thinks is hysterical and generally horrifies everyone around them.

 _1:30, beverly soon tofu,_ is Spencer’s reply, not thirty seconds later. _you better shut your mouth or i’m gonna fuck it._

Brendon bursts out laughing, almost spilling coffee all over himself.

He misses Sarah and James, but he missed this part of himself, too.

~

Bronx comes over that night, arriving at the front door with Ashlee, a black teddy bear that looks vaguely Japanese, a matching knapsack, and a plastic bag full of heavy looking Chinese take out containers.

“I brought dinner,” Ashlee grins, all one million watts of it, as Pete lets them in the front door, kissing Ashlee on the cheek before he kneels down to hug Bronx.

Brendon hides in the living room doorway, smiling at Ashlee when they catch eyes. She’s pushing hair back behind her ears, toeing off her slip-ons, and smiling at Pete when he takes the food out of her hands.

“Hey buddy,” Patrick greets, bouncing down the staircase with his laptop under one arm, and an empty coffee mug in the other.

As a true Wentz, Patrick has always been the apple of Bronx’s eye, and his mere presence has him monkeying out of Pete’s arms and hustling to the stairs, big grin on his face as he offers to take Patrick’s mug from him, both hands out expectantly.

“Apple, tree,” Ashlee laughs at Pete, flipping her hand and saying what everyone is thinking as Bronx takes his knapsack off and crouches right at the base of the stairs to zip it open, ready to show Patrick all of the treasures he’s collected over the last week. Ashlee extends one arm up as she approaches Brendon, and wraps it around his neck, “How you doing, anyway?”

Pete totally told her, he can see the sad softness in her eyes.

“You brought food, I’m feeling great,” He says, deflecting, hugging her back. She laughs against his shoulder, warm arm around his middle, and pats his back.

She pulls away from him, taking a step back as Pete walks past the both of them, en route to the kitchen with the food in both hands.

“What do people say?” She asks, glancing at Pete with her eyebrows raised as he passes by. He raises one eyebrow at her and makes a ‘you’re weird’ face. “It is what it is?”

Patrick is suddenly behind them, back on track with Bronx beside him.

“And so it is,” He says, not really paying attention to the conversation.

Ashlee smiles at him, and then Brendon, eyes dancing.

“And so it is,” She repeats, laughing, like she knows something that he doesn’t yet.

~

They eat dinner around the kitchen island, everyone standing up except for Bronx, who kneels on one of the bar stools.

“Oh no, oh my god,” Patrick is laughing, trying to catch a fork full of noodles that are falling out of Ashlee’s open, laughing mouth with his chopsticks. 

Brendon has no idea how their quiet conversation escalated to Ashlee making a joke with her dinner hanging out of her mouth, but there you have it, and now Patrick is cracking up laughing, leaning against the countertop with both hands so he can lean over and watch Ashlee spit her mouthful back onto the plate.

He catches Pete’s gaze, and laughs to himself when Pete rolls his eyes and mouths ‘bitches,’ before spooning some more lemon chicken onto Bronx’s plate with a hidden smile on his face.

Smiling, Brendon shakes his head and goes back to his own bowl of fried rice, fork for him as he never quite figured out how to use chopsticks without wearing his food. It’s kind of embarrassing, actually - even Bronx knows how to eat with them, and he’s only ten.

It’s kind of cool, being part of the Wentz-Simpson-Stumps, even if it is only for a little bit of time. Pete’s right, it took a while to figure out, but now, it works. Everyone has a grin on their face, even Brendon, and if that isn’t something to aspire to, Brendon isn’t sure what is.

Pete loses a chunk of sweet and sour pork en route from the container to his plate, which seems to be some kind of party foul as Bronx, Ashlee and Patrick boo.

Brendon laughs, watching as Pete swears, fumbling the piece of pork back off of the counter top and back into his mouth with bare fingers, yelling, “Five second rule! Five second rule!” as he chews.

~

Before he falls asleep that night, Brendon texts Sarah.

_I will never not appreciate your presence in my life, just so you know._

~

The next afternoon, Spencer is already sitting at a table in the restaurant they chose when Brendon shows up at 1:40.

“Sorry man, traffic,” He apologizes, pulling a wooden chair out and throwing his car keys on the table as he tries to shrug out of his jacket simultaneously.

Spencer sets his phone face down on the table, not looking upset at Brendon’s tardiness, but not looking overly excited to see him, either. He nods at Brendon’s shirt, which is done up one button wrong and hanging crookedly from his neck, and says, “Uh...”

“I - ugh. Slept until eleven, bad traffic,” Brendon explains, shaking his head as he swears softly, and then reaches down to unbutton and re-button the top four holes in his shirt.

A waitress passes by, asking “Water?” as Brendon is slipping his top button through the loop.

“Yes please, coffee too, both of us,” Spencer replies, smirking as she looks at Brendon disapprovingly, and then scribbles on her notepad before tossing them each a menu. She leaves after nodding her head, and Spencer turns back to Brendon to ask, “I thought you said you guys are still in a dry spell.”

Snorting, Brendon flips his hair off his head, and glances up at the ceiling. “You have no idea. I figured Linda would have said something to you.”

“Linda’s been in Japan all month,” Spencer shrugs, flipping his menu open. “What, Sarah pregnant again or something?”

Brendon sinks back against his seat, and thumbs his wedding band. He hasn’t taken it off yet, he actually hasn’t considered taking it off yet - it just hadn’t occurred to him.

“Almost,” He raises his eyebrows. Spencer looks at him over the menu, raising an eyebrow and looking at him curiously. “We’re getting divorced, actually.”

Spencer almost drops the menu, but after fumbling it for a moment, instead uses it as a screen to shield them both from the other people eating in the restaurant as he leans across the table and hisses, almost sounding hysterical, “Cause _divorce_ is almost like getting pregnant!”

“Life changes,” Brendon hisses back, trying to knock the menu away from them both. Spencer is totally making a scene.

Shooting him a look, Spencer holds the menu straighter, and snaps, voice low, “What the hell?”

“I’m fine,” Brendon snaps, and then someone is clearing their throat, and they both look away from the menu as Spencer lowers it. The waitress is standing beside their table, holding a tray with two coffees, a pitcher of water, and cream and sugar. Brendon forces a grin, and leans back awkwardly. “Thank you.”

She looks at each of them one more time, and then takes a step back, saying, “I’ll give you a minute to figure out what you want to eat.”

“Thank you,” Brendon repeats, pulling his coffee closer.

Across from him, Spencer looks like the rug got pulled out from under his feet.

“This isn’t about…” He trails off and then doesn’t know where to go with it, or what to actually say. Instead, he just makes a pained face, and flaps his menu.

Brendon’s stomach sinks. He wishes he weren’t so transparent. “This is about Sarah and James.”

“Okay,” Spencer replies, nodding, but still looking at Brendon’s face curiously. He opens his menu finally, even though he doesn’t look at a thing on the page, and reaches for his own coffee - no cream, and adds loads and loads of sugar. “Do you need?...”

Shaking his head, Brendon flips open his own menu, and goes right for the lunch specials.

“Sleeping on Pete’s couch right now,” He says, and then lets go of his menu to twist his wedding ring around his finger once, considering. “I guess I’ll start looking at places next month.”

Spencer nods, and shakes his head, “Well, just let me know if you need anything. Alright?”

“Yeah, of course,” Brendon says, and he knows that they both mean it.

~

Spencer sends him off with a few demo tracks he’s been tinkering around with loaded onto a USB stick, and the promise that he won’t let anything about the divorce slip to Linda until Sarah has a chance to talk to her first.

It’s good to see Spencer, great even, and Brendon gives him a warm hug before they part ways and he starts back down the street to where he parked his car three blocks away - the only spot he could find that wouldn’t require having to parallel park.

He leaves the USB on his passenger side seat - it’s kind of his thing to drive around aimlessly and listen to demos and song ideas in solitude - and slides his phone from his pocket, plugging it in before he has a chance to get lost driving back to Pete’s house.

There’s a text from Sarah, and it says, _Likewise, B <3._

It’s poignant in its simplicity, and Brendon smiles to himself before turning the ignition over, letting his phone drop onto the passenger seat, too.

~

Before bed that night, he sends an email to he and Sarah’s attorney, detailing everything that needs to be done. 

Pete had pushed him hard for a prenup before he and Sarah had married, which makes everything a bit more straight forward, even though Pete had ultimately been operating as a man scorned when he had originally dispensed his advice.

He copies Sarah on the email, too, and then texts her with a heads up, and an invitation to meet up for a meal tomorrow. He imagines waking up to legal matters in your inbox is about as fun as getting the divorce pulled on him was in the first place.

There’s a knock on the living room archway plaster, and Brendon looks away from his phone to see Patrick standing there in his flannel pants, hair sticking in about ten different directions.

“Hey man, listen I’ve got some studio stuff tomorrow, and Pete’s gonna be downtown most of the day, so are you gonna be okay here alone? We only have one key right now so it’s kind of an in or out thing,” He explains, sounding apologetic.

Brendon sits up halfway - hates being the only person in the room who’s laying down, unless he’s hungover or naked or sometimes even both - and shakes his head, instantly feeling bad that Patrick looks like he’s the one who’s putting Brendon out.

“Dude. No more words,” He smiles, fond of the way Patrick smiles back at him and shrugs his shoulders a little, like he really should have some kind of alternative to offer his guest. “Tomorrow I have a date with Venice Beach and my skateboard, anyway.”

Patrick laughs, humming a bit before he grins, “Wild threeway.”

“Oh, so crazy. Nuts, even,” Brendon grins, raising his eyebrows. There’s a pause where it almost seems like Patrick is just going to say goodnight and head back upstairs, but then Brendon clears his throat and says, voice steady albeit unsure, “You know how much I appreciate you guys letting me stay here, right?”

Flapping his hand, Patrick shakes his head and says, “Come on.”

“Just - I appreciate it,” Brendon presses, wanting to make sure that Patrick does get it. Fuck, if there’s one person in the entire universe who gets it other than Pete, it’d be Patrick. Smiling a little, Brendon leans back against his pillows, and raises his eyebrows. “In show of my appreciation, I’ll get dinner tomorrow. Like, real food, not Chinese.”

Patrick laughs and takes a step out of the room, “Don’t let Pete hear you say that.”

“Italian?” Brendon asks, laughing when Patrick laughs again. “I’ll pick some up on my way home from my afternoon threesome.”

There’s another burst of laughter before Patrick appears right back in the door frame.

“Seven thirty, Italian food, the kitchen right down there,” Patrick confirms, gesturing behind him to the dark, empty kitchen with one thumb. “Done deal.”

Brendon grins widely, waving goodnight to Patrick, and echoing, “Done deal,” behind him.

~

They’re all out of the house by eight the next morning, and Brendon starts his car up with a plan in mind, waving to Pete and Bronx through the front window as they climb into the Range Rover.

Breakfast with Sarah, he thinks, buckling his seat belt in. And then an afternoon spent with his long board on the boardwalks in Venice Beach, possibly precluded by or right before listening to Spencer’s demos.

Bronx grins and waves at him again as Pete pulls down the driveway next to him, and just like that, it’s a new day and Brendon is ready to go.

~

Sarah meets him at In-N-Out, which has been a fixture in both of their lives for as long as Brendon can remember.

She’s smiling, holding James on her hip, and extends an arm out to give him a hug as he approaches. Somehow they both managed to arrive at the exact same time, and they come to a stop beside a table, sun umbrella and bench outside the main door to embrace.

“Hey buddy,” He greets James, going from the hug to accepting his son as Sarah hands him over, both of her hands tucked underneath his arms.

He babbles at Brendon, noises and the few word beginnings that he knows - da, ma, ba, ta - strung together, reaching for Brendon’s hair as Brendon settles him on his hip, looking down at him with a grin.

“I missed you buddy,” He says, which is an understatement, and kisses him on the head.

~

They sit outside, at the same table that they hugged in front of, James balanced on one of Brendon’s thighs as he eats his burger one-handed.

“Do you think what we’re doing is weird?” Sarah asks, covering her burger filled mouth with one hand as she raises her eyebrows, questioning.

Brendon chews and pulls his sunglasses to the top of his head, readjusting James as he shrugs, and picks up his burger again.

“Define weird,” He says, taking another bite.

She swallows, setting her burger down, and reaching for her milkshake instead.

“I don’t know, it’s just like,” She takes a sip of the milkshake, cheeks hollowing out in the effort it takes to move the thick shake from glass to mouth. “Divorces are supposed to be messy, and I thought that I would be angrier, but I’m just…”

Brendon reaches for a napkin, and supplies, “Relieved.”

“Yes! Exactly,” She nods, pulling the straw out of her shake to lick the side of it. “I wasn’t made to hate you, you know? I just wasn’t made to love you, either.”

Nodding, Brendon reaches for the ketchup, and then dips a cold fry in it, putting it up to James’ mouth. He sticks his tongue out, a weird thing he’s been doing for the last month or so, and raises his eyebrows in an attempt to get closer.

“I don’t regret it,” He says, mainly looking at James, before his gaze snaps up to Sarah, who has gone back to her burger, brightly painted nails framing the silver wrapper. “Even if I knew how it all ended, I still would have married you.”

She smiles at him, eyes warm, and then drops her gaze to watch James, still munching the fry slowly, more spit coming out of his mouth than there is food going into it.

“We’re going to be okay,” Sarah says. She doesn’t sound exhausted this time, and Brendon believes her.

~

After lunch, Brendon kisses James goodbye, gives Sarah another hug, and heads back to his car.

He waves at them both from the driver’s seat as he buckles himself in and starts the car, plugging Spencer’s USB into his deck before he goes any further. There isn’t a ton that Spencer has given him, just a few tracks with backbeats, a drum solo, a couple of melodies that he’s been working on. But a start is a start.

It’s barely after one o’clock when he leaves In-N-Out, but it ultimately ends up being closer to two by the time he arrives in Venice Beach, managing to find street parking on Venice Boulevard.

There’s a music festival happening down on the boardwalk, a soft swell of percussion trailing through the warm air as Brendon pops the trunk open for his longboard, safely wedged between his gym bag and James’ stroller.

He drops the board to the paved parking lot and slams the trunk shut, and then he’s moving, cutting through the air as he makes his way towards the sound of the band.

Venice Beach has always - always - been one of his favorite places in LA, California, the west coast. In elementary school, he’d had a classmate who spent one week in a tourist motel during summer vacation, and after seeing her Polaroids on the first day back at school, the place had stuck in his mind. 

It had been the first place that he and Shaun had run away to when he’d first moved to LA, they had taken tequila shots and played a few rounds of hoop basketball before they’d hit the rides and Brendon had inevitably thrown up all over some seagulls under the boardwalk, wiping his mouth clumsily with the arm of his hoodie as they’d staggered back up to where they’d chained their bikes in the parking lot.

He can’t remember what the special occasion was, but he’d been here with Pete, too. He had vague memories of him with his too-long flat ironed black hair, tight jeans and black eyeliner, back when that had still been Pete Wentz, and they had sat on one of the railings under the stars as Pete talked about Jeanae and Brendon talked about Ryan.

A year later he had brought Ryan here, actually, now that he’s fondly trudging down memory lane with nothing but a shovel to dig himself down with and a sore spot for the past. They had walked along the beach, down the boardwalk with Brendon carving circles on his board around Ryan’s walking pace. They’d eaten out of food stands and bought stupid stuffed animals for Jac and Audrey in-between conversations about the first record.

Brendon blinks, steering himself just enough to avoid a pack of tourists fussing over a sidewalk artist who looks like he’s operating with a basket of homemade chalk and a half empty bottle of rum. 

What a weird time in his life, he thinks belatedly, when his social schedule consisted of dress up parties, drinking so much he’d throw up, recording, trying to have sex with Audrey, and building a friendship with Ryan and Spencer.

The idea that he has not known Spencer for his whole life is a concept that still boggles him, honestly.

Frowning at nobody in particular, he continues along the boardwalk, every few paces letting one foot drop down to give him a few more kicks, a slightly faster speed. After the second album he would come down here and daydream about being a transient street artist who didn’t care if his band was on the edge of both glory and breaking up. He’d call himself Bel Air and his favorite color would be the same blue shade as the ocean.

Changing all the time.

Instead he was just some frontman who’s band was both on the edge of glory, and breaking up. Not to mention he’d managed to collect an assortment of deeply personal issues, most of which began and ended with Ryan.

Fuck, does that ever still hurt, he thinks, skating harder.

~

Three hours later he’s starving again, and headed back to the parking lot.

“Paper roses, paper roses,” One of the street vendors is singing, and at first Brendon isn’t sure if she’s busking for change or actually selling a product. By the time he considers this, she’s in front of him, holding a dozen roses constructed with various types of paper. “Paper rose?”

His stomach drops. Roses are one thing that he won’t do. Sarah never got roses. Daisies. Daffodils. Lilacs, he had bought them all for her, by the stem and in the dozens and fashioned in various types of displays. But never, not even for an anniversary or their wedding, did he get her roses.

“One for a dollar, you can’t say no!” She exclaims, jostling the dozen she holds, her fingers smudged with the news ink that he assumes would rub off while piecing them together, petal by petal.

He comes to a stop, he can’t not without totally bowling this lady over.

“Do you have any other kind of flower?” Brendon asks, trying to sneak a glance at her blanket.

She shakes her head, gestures to his left hand. “Roses. Rose for you. Rose for your wife.”

“I’m…” He stops and trails off. He doesn’t even know how to explain what he is. Totally fucking nuts for letting this get to him for going on ten years, maybe. A new resilience flares up in his stomach, and he digs around in his pocket. “I’ll have one.”

Her face breaks out into a wide smile and she nods, already tugging one out of her wrapped dozen.

“For you! The best one for you,” She’s saying, holding one of the larger ones out for him to take. He exchanges a dollar for it and holds it awkwardly, nodding his head a little.

It feels heavy in his hand, a rose built with words typed into paper, and damned if that isn’t hysterical.

“Thank you,” He says, nodding again, moving on. “Thank you.”

She smiles at him again and turns back to her blanket, carefully sliding the dollar away, until it’s tucked safely in her pocket.

~

He didn’t so much plan his day-long excursion, and ends up getting stuck in rush hour traffic on the way back to Pete and Patrick’s house. Actually, he doesn’t so much as almost make it out of Venice Beach before he’s sitting along a row of cars, each driver inching forward as they move along the residential road at a snails pace.

Without meaning to, he sneaks glances over at the paper flower sitting on his passenger seat.

Spencer’s demo is playing again, and Brendon distractedly taps along with the drumline on one of the beat driven demos he’s put together. It’s good, it’s catchy. It’s definitely the start of something great.

As traffic inches along, he calls an Italian place close to Pete and Patrick’s to place a takeout order. He gets everything that sounds good, because he honestly doesn’t really know what either of them like other than pizza, Chinese, and Red Bull. He assumes meatballs and a tray of traditional lasagne are a good places to start.

He’s just giving his credit card information when his car jerks to a stop, and his gaze snaps up, away from where he had been looking at the track number on the playing demo.

“Fuck,” He grumbles to the nice Italian woman taking his order. “I just rear-ended someone, did you need any more information from me?”

Laughing nervously, she says, “We’re ready to go, Mr. Urie. See you for pick-up in an hour, hopefully!”

“Yeah,” He sighs, hitting the 'end call' button before he throws his iPhone onto the passenger seat and puts his blinker on, beginning the slow decline of moving over two lanes so he can pull onto the shoulder.

The car he hit follows suit, and it definitely wasn’t a crash or a crunch, but there was definite contact, enough for Brendon’s license plate to crumple backwards on the bumper, which is the first thing he notices when he gets out of his car.

After surveying the damage to his own car, he realizes he forgot his insurance information in the glove compartment, so he hustles back to his car, leaning over the front seat, crumpling everything on the drivers seat with his weight-balancing palm as he digs around in the glove compartment.

One of James’ toys fall to the footwell of the passenger seat, followed by the multiple packs of ketchup that Sarah used to require he keep from take-out places, a wad of drive through napkins, a lighter, and the most random pair of gloves he’s seen in his life. His insurance is way at the back, pushed up against the far side of the compartment.

Belatedly, he realizes that he’s never actually hit someone before. This is turning out to be a month of firsts for him.

Backing out of his front seat, he slams the car door and then jogs up to where the other person has pulled in front of him. It’s a similar car to his own, actually, black and probably late 2000s. Tinted windows, he notes, as he comes up to the drivers side window.

He hopes he didn’t hit a moderately successful rapper or party girl.

“Oh my god,” He intones, when the window is down far enough that he can see who it is in the drivers side. The insurance papers accidentally fall from his hand and unceremoniously slap against the gravel surface in their protective plastic cover.

Ryan, in the driver’s seat, pulls his hand away from where it had been pressed against his temple in a half-assed attempt to block his identity, and offers a weary smile up at Brendon.

He doesn’t say anything, which is pretty indicative of his character, so Brendon says, “Oh my god,” again.

They stare at one another for a moment, Brendon’s pulse picking up to a triple beat as his nervous system kicks into gear and sends smoke signals to his brain - _red alert, red alert, Ryan is in periphery, all systems go, go go, this is not a drill_ \- his mouth opens but he doesn’t know what to say, so he just makes a noise and laughs awkwardly before bending over at the hip to pick up his insurance papers.

The moment his fingers touch the envelope, Ryan’s door connects with his skull, and they both swear, Brendon staggering backwards, paper dropping from his hands once more.

“Fuck, sorry,” Ryan is saying now, and Brendon sees his feet, ratty black sneakers and white socks.

Brendon puts one of his hands out, steadying himself against the side of Ryan’s car, and shakes his head, the other hand coming up to press against his forehead. That was a solid connection, a direct hit that he can feel all the way down to his teeth.

“You brained the fuck out of me, holy shit,” He says, shaking his head, blinking a few times to get his vision back online. Ryan still looks concerned, one hand held out in front of him awkwardly, wondering if he should do more. Brendon forces a smile, kind of, and shrugs one shoulder, “I’m alright. I think.”

Kneeling down, Ryan picks up Brendon’s insurance envelope, and then stands back up to awkwardly offer it to him.

“I’m really sorry,” He says, voice low, and to anyone else it might sound like disinterest, but to Brendon, it just sounds like his old friend. “I uh, you freaked me out, and I was going to help you pick, uh, this, up,” He gestures with the hand holding the information packet, which Brendon finally accepts. “So, there we go.”

Brendon rubs the top of his head, almost expecting blood.

“Are you alright?” He asks, gesturing to their cars. “How much damage did I do?”

One hand on the back of his neck, Ryan shrugs, and starts walking around to where the rear of Ryan’s car is sitting in front of Brendon’s, still running.

“I haven’t actually looked. It was a surprise to see you,” Ryan says honestly, rounding the corner.

Cringing, heart rate still slightly higher than normal, Brendon follows after Ryan, feeling a dip in his stomach at the low-key jeans and leather jacket combination that he sees. Totally Instagram worthy, Pete would joke, even though he was no better, before laughing loudly and pretending to snap a photo with his iPhone fingers.

“You too,” Brendon says, faintly, coming to a stop beside Ryan.

And, shit. It’s not bad. Like, it’s not really bad. But it isn’t good, either. There’s definitely a dent, for starters, and not the “I know a guy who can probably buff that out” kind of dent.

“Sorry I hit you, man, I just - I wasn’t paying attention,” Brendon babbles, instantly affronted with himself as he kneels down to get a closer look. He hears Ryan’s shoes scuff the ground next to him as he runs one hand over the dent, trying to rub some of the paint from his bumper off. “I just wasn’t paying attention. Totally my bad, I was listening to this stupid demo Spencer sent me, and…”

He trails off, silence swelling between them despite the whip and snap sound of cars passing by them, now at a steady rate. Which totally figures.

“How is he?” Ryan asks, taking a step closer. 

Brendon cringes and closes his eyes, thumb coming to a stop over where the dent is.

“Spencer’s good,” He says after a beat of hesitation, and then stands up. “Um, so listen, this is totally my bad, man, so I’ll, you know - whatever works for the insurance company.”

They finally meet eyes, like, actually meet eyes, when Brendon raises his gaze up off of the ground. He knows he’s acting like a scared animal, flip flopping at the side of the road, but Ryan was the last person that he was expecting to rear end today, and it’s been a long month.

“You’re married?” Ryan asks instead, gesturing to Brendon’s hand still holding the insurance papers.

Brendon’s stomach goes cold as his gaze drops to the ring, too, glinting in the late afternoon sun.

“That’s, uh,” He pauses, licking his bottom lip, and then breathes a laugh, glancing up at Ryan before his gaze drops back down to the ring. “Divorced, actually.”

He feels embarrassed. Totally fucking embarrassed that Ryan has caught him like this, in the breakdown of yet another relationship. He could’ve lied. Fuck, he should have lied.

“I’m sorry,” Ryan says, but he doesn’t sound too much like it. Traffic whips past the two of them standing at the side of the road, the smell of the engine running warm drifting through the air. “Don’t, uh. Don’t worry about the dent thing or… anything. It’s not a big deal, I can actually probably find someone to just pop it back out for free.”

Thumb sliding behind his pointer and middle finger, Brendon hides his wedding band without meaning to, and shakes his head.

“This was my fault - I, I really don’t mind,” He says, trying to be reasonable. When Ryan doesn’t look any more convinced, he gets a better idea, and takes a jumping step backwards, towards his car. “Better idea, wait one second.”

Ryan does. He stands between their two cars with his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, hair short but the top part still whipping through the wind. Brendon slides into the drivers seat and reaches for the glove compartment once more, digging around until he finds a pen and one of the napkins he dropped on the floor earlier in his urgent search for the insurance information.

Scribbling his current phone number and email on the napkin, Brendon adds “Bden” just in case, and glances up once more at Ryan. He catches Ryan looking at him and they both jerk to look away, Brendon fumbling as he puts the lid back on his Sharpie.

“Here we go,” He shouts, and then gets back out of the car. Ryan raises both eyebrows at him and doesn’t take his hands out of his pockets. “If you change your mind at all, ever. Just text me. Or email me. Don’t call, I usually don’t pick up numbers I don’t recognize.”

Ouch, that hurt without meaning to. Brendon fumbles for a second, but then offers up a genuine smile, holding the napkin between them.

“Thanks,” Ryan says, accepting it. It rolls back and forth in the wind, but Ryan tucks it safely into the inside pocket of his jacket, looking at Brendon’s face again. “But just to, you know. I probably won’t.”

Brendon shrugs, and smiles. “Just in case.”

“Alright,” Ryan nods, already taking a step backwards. “Well, uh, good to see you.”

He feels his back pockets for his smokes just because he doesn’t know what else to do. “You too, sorry again, for the, uh,” He gets the cigarette pack in one hand and mimes rear-ending him. “The bumper.”

“It’s okay,” Ryan says over his shoulder, reaching down to open his car door. “Sorry about your head.”

Brendon flaps his hand once to wave him off and then lights the cigarette, inhaling deep. So deeply that his lungs feel warm, happy in their constriction. He watches as Ryan gets into his car and then belatedly puts his blinker on as he inches back over the shoulder, into traffic.

He feels different, somehow. The sun is setting but it feels like a new start, a new morning to begin something differently, to change.

Inhaling deep again, Brendon flicks his ash into the space Ryan’s car left, and watches him until he can’t anymore, his rear lights fading into the distance spotted with palm trees, streetlights, and brick hotel exteriors.

He’s got Italian food to pick up, and a dinner date at 7:30.


	2. summertime sadness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I legit thought I was done with this fic and would never write more.
> 
> Then I re-watched a bunch of Panic stuff and now here we are.
> 
> Still not sure how much more I'll write, but this is pretty fun to tap back into right now.
> 
> Leave me a comment if you'd like to see more :)

Once the woman at the Italian restaurant has asked him if he’s okay and given him shit about using his phone in the car, she launches into a story about her sister getting whiplash. It spans the entirety of their transaction, and does not give Brendon a second to get a word in edgewise.

Secretly, Brendon is grateful for the distraction. He still hasn’t quite recovered from the event; thankfully, the fender bender itself is a great excuse to use as a cover up for the way his hands are still shaking, and the fact that he can’t quite seem to string a full sentence together without his voice breaking.

“Thanks again,” He says, nodding, as he picks the two bags of food up off of the counter.

Brendon can’t stop himself from thinking about Ryan the entire way back to Pete and Patrick’s house.

~

When he pulls up outside, Pete’s car is parked in the driveway, and most of the lights are on inside.

He’s a little late - he wasn’t expecting to get into a minor car accident, which kind of threw him off schedule - so he tries to hurry getting out of the car and up the front walkway, bags banging against his legs as he takes the rock steps two at a time.

Pete beats him to the punch and meets him at the door, opening it halfway with a stern, “Young man.”

“You are not going to believe,” Brendon pauses as he hands one of the two bags over for Pete to take. “The day that I had.”

Laughing, Pete shrugs and starts down the front hall, pausing by the stairway as Brendon shuffles in and then kicks his shoes off into the mountain of shoes that are already piled up outside the entryway closet.

“I don’t know, man,” He says, continuing on his way towards the kitchen with Brendon right behind him. “I watched someone’s kid puke on the playground today - seriously, vomit _everywhere._ That little dude should not have been on the merry go round.”

As they round the corner into the kitchen, Patrick looks up from where he’s leaning against the kitchen island counter with both elbows. He grimaces, nose wrinkling, and stops tapping his pencil against Bronx’s homework page. He sounds affronted on Brendon’s behalf as he asks, “Are you seriously telling him the playground story already? Nobody wants to hear about some kid throwing up, Pete.”

“It’s _funny_ ,” Pete intones, raising his eyebrows. Clearly they’ve had this conversation before Brendon was added into the mix.

Bronx looks up from where he’s trying to answer math problems that are just barely within Patrick’s scope, and totally sells Pete out. He laughs and tells everyone, “That mom got mad at you.”

“Hey!” Pete laughs, sounding a little scandalized as Patrick rolls his eyes and drops the pencil, heading over to the cupboards to get some plates down instead. “She didn’t get _mad_ at me.”

Before the conversation can escalate any further, Patrick sets a stack of plates down in the middle of the island, and announces, “Dinner. Let’s eat. Bronx, hands please.”

“Mom,” Pete teases, sliding up behind Patrick. He wraps his arms around Patrick’s middle as Bronx jumps down from the bar stool, and heads in the direction of the bathroom instead. Brendon looks to the side, trying not to watch - it seems too intimate, all of a sudden, to see them like this - and starts to unstack the plates.

By the time he looks back up, they’ve separated. Pete is getting drinks out of the fridge, and Patrick is cracking open the lasagne.

“How was your day, anyway?” Patrick asks, directing his question at Brendon. He raises his eyebrows, and starts to unroll the silver tinfoil the garlic bread is wrapped in. “Anything exciting happen?”

Brendon stands there for a moment, stupefied, with the empty plate held in his hands.

He opens his mouth, but for some reason he can’t get the words to come out. There’s no way to explain it succinctly, there’s nothing he can say that won’t end in having to answer a thousand follow up questions. For some reason, in that moment, he has a flash of want, of need, to keep it close to his chest. To keep it secret, just for a little while.

To have Ryan all to himself, just for a moment.

“Not much, man,” Brendon sighs, going for casual. “Just spent a day on the boardwalk. Ate a churro. Bought a fake flower.”

Pete makes an ‘aww’ noise, and holds his plate out for Patrick to load up with food. He looks over at Brendon and teases, “You shouldn’t have, honey.”

“I’m so romantic,” Brendon sighs, holding his plate out next as Pete snags a piece of garlic bread and starts to walk over to the kitchen table. Patrick laughs, sucking a bit of tomato sauce off of his finger as he leverages a wedge of the lasagne onto Brendon’s plate. “I would seriously fuck this food, though. Delicious.”

Cackling, Pete settles down at the kitchen table, and says, “Now that’s romance.”

“You guys want beer or anything?” Patrick asks, as Bronx comes back into the kitchen.

Bronx gets within a foot of the kitchen island before Patrick hands him his plate, pre-loaded with lasagne and a handful of baby carrots that are entirely Bronx approved.

“I feel like Italian people drink wine,” Pete replies, digging into his lasagne with his fork.

Making an agreeable noise, Patrick squats down and disappears behind the kitchen island for a second. There’s some thumping as he digs around in one of the shelves, and then he stands up - a bottle of wine in his hands like a party favor.

“Magic,” Brendon laughs, taking a bite of his garlic bread.

~

After dinner, Brendon challenges Pete to a game of one on one basketball because he’s still so jazzed up from bumping into Ryan.

“I feel like, super adult right now,” Pete laughs, his wine glass still in one hand as he dribbles the basketball with his other hand. He takes a sip of wine, and then awkwardly throws the basketball at the hoop one-handed. He has a distinct lack of finesse, and they both watch as the basketball hits the rim of the hoop and then bounces away, towards the pool.

Brendon stands in the middle of the court, smoking a cigarette and drinking his wine. He watches Pete as he runs to catch the ball before it hits water.

“I’m in a weird place, man,” Brendon announces, which is news to neither of them.

The wine has loosened him up, made his brain warm and fuzzy. He isn’t drunk, but he isn’t entirely sober, either. The wine is making him want to chain smoke cigarettes and play basketball forever while black and white Andy Warhol films are projected on the house stucco in the background. Wine does weird shit to his head.

“That’s pretty much, like… yeah,” Pete shrugs, ball in one hand as he walks back towards the court. He throws back the rest of his wine in one go, and then bends down to set the wine glass on the floor before he throws the ball, two handed this time. It swishes through the hoop. He laughs and adds, “Nothin’ but net.”

Brendon makes a ‘well played’ face, and reaches for the ball before it has a chance to get past him. He awkwardly dribbles it one handed, cigarette balanced between his lips as he squints to keep the smoke out of his eyes. He simultaneously feels really cool and really decidedly not cool.

That seems to be the way of it, lately.

~

He was never going to marry Ryan.

That was not ever part of the plan; even if they had stayed together, they could never of ended up like Pete and Patrick. They were just different, two totally alternate pieces on the board, and it wasn’t in their cards.

Brendon - he didn’t like to think about it. He actively tried not to think about it, because thinking about how things could have ended differently just never did anybody any good. It was a game you’d never win. But when he did - when he had those secret little moments to himself right before he fell asleep at night, he’d imagine how their life together might have been.

They’d travel a lot. They would almost always be on the road. In Brendon’s wildest fantasies they were kind of like Sonny and Cher - touring aimlessly, hosting variety shows, throwing sassy domestic banter back and forth on stage. They’d sing cheesy duets and wear matching outfits made out of yarn. Those were the fantasies that made him smile, quiet and secret and painful.

For one small moment in time, though, he’d relented against the part of himself that said “protect yourself at all costs,” and given in. Those nights that he’d spent sleeping with his mouth against the nape of Ryan’s neck - back then, he’d thought they’d all meant something. Those moments, those pulsing nights that only they had shared, he thought maybe they could go on forever. He had been young and naive and stupid, and hadn’t stopped to consider for one second just how damaged Ryan was. Brendon had just assumed Ryan had felt the same, that those shared nights could fix the empty pieces of his heart and the mis-wired pieces of his brain. Ultimately he had been proven wrong for ever assuming anything at all.

Ryan broke his heart, publicly. In one day, Brendon’s fantasy shattered from a campy two man variety show, to sitting in the middle of the stage alone, sobbing into both hands like a child.

There was no way to get that person back. The man he was before Ryan left him no longer existed; and sometimes Brendon liked to think the man he’d become was better, more improved. Other nights, he can’t be sure.

~

The next morning, Brendon video Skypes with Sarah and James on the porch after breakfast.

“Some insurance place called,” She says, nose wrinkled up as James reaches up and smacks her in the chin with his chubby hand. “They left a message on the voicemail, I guess they only had the house number on file.”

Brendon’s stomach drops down into his toes. He clears his throat and raises his eyebrows, asking, “What did they want?”

“I don’t really know,” Sarah shrugs, switching James to the other knee and bouncing him softly. “It was just an automated message that said the claim had been processed, but it wouldn’t affect our monthly insurance rate.”

Sighing, Brendon feels more relieved than he thinks he ought to. He runs a hand through his hair and reaches for his pack of cigarettes.

“I rear ended someone yesterday,” He says, leaving out absolutely all of the details as he lights his cigarette, using both hands to block the flame of his lighter from the light breeze. “It was totally my fault, I was being an idiot and talking on my phone.”

Sarah makes a ‘tsk tsk’ noise and intones, “Bad daddy.”

“Ba da bee,” James parrots, reaching for the screen.

Laughing, Brendon blinks back the sudden tears in his eyes, and tosses his lighter back onto the glass table top.

~

The rest of the week goes by in much of the same way that the first half did.

Brendon spends a lot of time with Pete, and eats every meal with the little family trio. On Friday afternoon, Ashlee drops by to pick Bronx back up for the weekend - they’re going up to San Francisco to meet her sister and her kids, and the whole thing sounds very wonderful and right out of the page of a J Crew catalogue.

He putters around in-between running errands with Patrick and watching 90s movies with Pete. Mostly he spends his time chain smoking on the porch, and texting with Dallon. For some reason he still hasn’t been able to physically type the words “we’re getting divorced,” so Dallon is still largely in the dark, which makes Brendon feel neither good nor bad.

As he’s tucking himself back into his bed on the couch late Friday night, Brendon’s phone vibrates.

Yawning, he digs himself a little deeper into the cushions, and brings his phone up, squinting into the bright screen with one eye.

He doesn’t mean to, but he drops his phone out of surprise when he reads the notification itself. His phone slides out of his hand and hits him in the cheekbone instead, going dim as he accidentally dismisses the alert with his mouth.

There are a lot of things that he has been expecting. This email was not one of them.

~

_i don’t want to bother you.i don’t want to interfere with your life.  
i see pw sometimes, and he never says a lot about you but sometimes i can get him to let a detail slip.  
(he never told me you were married. he never told me you were divorced)  
i could never work up enough nerve to ask.i could never work up enough nerve  
to do a lot of things, when it came to you._

_the universe has a way of making you face up to the things you couldn’t do by yourself.  
by you i mean me.  
me i just miss you._

_you were the sand in my shoes.salt in my eyes.teenage dream or something like it.  
i don’t write anything anymore but this feeling in my stomach is so familiar.  
it’s the opposite of home sick. it is coming home. a dream you haven’t slept through in years.  
you have been the universe i couldn’t reach.the song i couldn’t sing.the ocean i couldn’t swim in.  
i have ached to dip my feet for years._

_you have been a lot of things  
to me  
and i am continually reminded of your never ending presence in my life  
as soon   
as i think  
i’ve moved on._

_rr._


	3. come on cherry cherry

Brendon is running.

If he stops, the cold creep of anxiety will flood his chest, and he will have to think about what he’s done. If he stops, he will have to listen to his own thoughts instead of the steady thump of his sneakers hitting the ground. If he stops, he will finally have to face himself.

The neighborhood is unfamiliar, largely because he’s never really ventured outside the confines of Pete and Patrick’s backyard. It’s all very LA, very suburban, very “rich alternative musicians in their late thirties.” All of the houses are tan stucco with dark brown roofs, expensive looking iron railings and sweeping concrete staircases. Gardens built with succulents and cacti for as far as the eye can see, valleys of them.

Brendon finally slows down as he approaches a four way stop. He’s breathing hard, chest heaving, heart pounding. He feels deliriously alive, drunk with adrenaline and a distinct lack of sleep.

He bends over at the waist, leaning against his knees with his hands. He didn’t sleep at all last night. Instead he laid in the dark by himself, his entire body vibrating with displaced energy until Pete woke up around five. Brendon waited until five thirty, enough time for Pete to put some pants on and make the coffee, before he’d rolled off of the couch and headed into the kitchen feigning sleep. He hadn’t been able to work up the nerve to tell Pete about Ryan’s email.

That had always been the way they were - he and Ryan had existed in this little ecosystem that only the two of them were a part of. Sometimes it was violent, hard to live in, but it had been theirs. No one else ever made it through the doors.

“You alright man?” Pete asked him, raising one eyebrow as he’d poured himself another mug of coffee. “You’re like… really weird right now.”

Brendon looked up, surprised, from where he’d been checking his Vine feed obsessively. He’d tried to arrange his face in a way that did not read ‘last night my soulmate sent the apology I’ve been waiting eight years to hear.’

Instead he’d lied and said, “Just antsy.”

Pete seemed to understand. He’d gone back to sipping his coffee and staring at the screen of his MacBook until Brendon made noises about heading out for an early morning run. He’d snagged his sneakers and headed out the front door just as he heard the beginning thumps of Patrick starting to wake up and stumble around upstairs.

The early morning is doing nothing to clear his head, but it’s a familiar funnel to pour his anxiety into. He feels it blooming in icy tendrils up from his stomach, into his chest and through the branches of his lungs. Running keeps his skin warm, allows him to melt the anxiety down before it has a chance to take over, to freeze out the parts of him that used to be so hot, almost on fire.

He hasn’t responded to Ryan’s email yet. He has no idea what he would even say.

 _My wife asked me for a divorce because I could never give her the parts of me that belonged to you,_ Brendon thinks, crazily, shaking his head at himself as he starts to run again. _She knew before I did. Maybe she’s known forever; she never knew you, she never saw me around you._ He knows he’ll never say it out loud, won’t ever admit any of it to Ryan, but it comforts him to know there is a part of him that will never change. Just like Ryan’s lazy punctuation and lack of capitalization.

Brendon runs until he feels physically weak from exertion. He runs until the sun comes up, and cars begin to drive up and down the otherwise quiet residential streets. 

He runs until all that he can see is Ryan, standing in front of him, eight years older than before but still just the same.

~

At noon he has a meeting with his lawyer.

They go through the divorce paperwork, and Brendon is surprised to learn that it’s almost more expensive to separate from somebody than it is to marry them in the first place.

Everything is signed, sealed, delivered, and then Brendon is walking back out into the mid-day LA sun.

His lawyer said he should start looking for a new place to lease or buy; it’ll look better on paper when they file for joint custody. Brendon knows Sarah won’t fight him when it comes to James, but he heeds the advice anyways and leaves a stumbling, stilted message on his real estate agent’s voicemail. He can’t live on Pete and Patrick’s living room couch forever, as comforting as the idea sounds.

He skates around the neighbourhood for a bit, mostly because he has nowhere else to be.

For one afternoon he’s the weird guy who studies the posters hung up on the neighborhood watch board, and watches the buskers play entire sets on street corners. Dallon calls him just after three to ask if he wants to meet up for a drink and something salty. Brendon agrees immediately, and shoots Pete a text message to let him know he won’t be back in time for dinner.

~

Dallon meets him at a BBQ place a few blocks away, and is distractedly trying to set his car alarm when Brendon rolls up.

“My sweet price,” Brendon greets, wrapping one arm around Dallon’s chest as he kicks his board up into his free hand.

Laughing, Dallon flips his hair out of his eyes and returns the hug, patting Brendon on the curve of the shoulder as he pulls away.

“I got so fucking lost driving here,” Dallon complains, following Brendon in the direction of the restaurant. “I like your shoes.”

Brendon glances down at his sneakers and throws a smile over his shoulder at Dallon, “I like your face.”

“It’s too early to flirt with such abandon,” Dallon sighs, as they reach the restaurant door. They both stand by side for a moment, studying the printed menu hanging in a shadow box on the front of the door. The sun practically bakes their backs through their clothing; for fall, it’s hot. “The ribs look good. All you can eat.”

Reaching for the door handle, Brendon raises his eyebrows, flips his snapback around on his head, and intones, “Sooooold.”

The waitress inside is wearing black short shorts and a white tank top. She doesn’t seem to recognize either of them, she just shows them to a table by the window and hands out the drink and appy menus before she disappears in the direction of the kitchen, flipping her blonde ponytail over her shoulder as she goes.

“Sometimes I want to be a waitress,” Brendon says, lips pressed together. He’s fidgeting with the hot sauce bottle, eyes trained over Dallon’s shoulder, at their waitress who is now filling two tall glasses with ice. He flickers his gaze to Dallon, and asks, “You ever feel like that?”

Dallon makes a face and checks his phone once before flipping it over, screen to the table top.

“I was a waiter, at one point,” He says, frowning. “You’re romanticizing the lowest rung of the totem pole.”

Sighing, Brendon leans back against the leather booth seat, and steadies his gaze. He’s been putting off telling Dallon for some reason, he can’t even quantify exactly why. For some reason telling Dallon is different: Dallon has only ever known Brendon with Sarah. He doesn’t know the person that Brendon was before she came along and changed everything. She brightened him in every single way.

“Sarah and I are getting divorced,” He bites out. It falls flat, and Dallon almost looks like he thinks Brendon’s joking for a moment. Brendon swallows, frowns, raises his eyebrows, and then adds, “It’s mutual. I love her a lot, and she loves me, but we don’t love each other like that anymore.”

Dallon is quiet for a long moment, studying Brendon’s face carefully. He finally replies, “Okay. How are you handling it so far?”

“I’m staying with Pete and Patrick,” Brendon shrugs. “It’s almost been a week. It’s weird. I’m smoking a lot.”

Frowning, Dallon shrugs one shoulder and replies, “Well, yeah. How’s James?”

“Keepin it gangsta,” Brendon smiles. He laughs a little bit, and then adds, “We Skype in the mornings. He’s fucking incredible.”

That seems to satisfy Dallon. He nods, pats Brendon’s hand, and smiles at the waitress when she comes back with their beer.

~

Brendon is scrolling through Ryan’s email again while Dallon is in the bathroom.

They’re about four rounds in. The sun is beginning to set on the horizon, and the large picture windows that line the far side of the restaurant let the orange light in. It makes Brendon feel warm, it makes the afternoon feel special. Like the universe is lighting a shot just for them. He bites the side of his thumb and re-reads the last three lines of Ryan’s message to him. It’s too intimate, and he has to take a precautionary swallow of beer before he gets to the familiar “ _rr_ ” at the bottom of the email.

What do you even say to something like that? _Oh, you know. It’s all cool, bro. Thanks for lying to the insurance company so my monthly rate won’t get jacked up. PS, cute poem. xoxo yours forever, Bden._ With the exception of the note he wrote Ryan on the side of the highway, he can’t even remember the last time he referred to himself as anything other than “Brendon.” How can he turn that part of himself on so quickly?

“I can’t eat anymore ribs,” Dallon groans, dropping back into the seat. “Let’s switch to wings. Buffalo sauce. Ugh.”

Laughing, Brendon dims his phone screen and reaches for his beer. There’s one mouthful left in the bottom, and he throws it back in a single gulp. He’s a little drunk already, but he feels loose, good on the inside.

“Wings and another round,” He nods, holding his finger up in the air until he makes eye contact with their waitress over the heads of the group sitting opposite them. She smiles and gives him a thumbs up, and then turns back to the beer taps. Brendon slouches back against the leather seat, studies Dallon’s face for a moment, and then asks, “Remind me. Have I ever told you about Ryan?”

There’s no question of ‘Ryan who?’ despite the fact the name is deliciously common. Instead, Dallon laughs, sharp and a little bit in disbelief as he stares back across the table top. He raises his eyebrows, clearly scandalized, and replies, “You mean the man of who we dare not speak its name? Mr. Beetlejuice himself? Should we cover the mirrors up before we go any further in this conversation?”

“Alright,” Brendon laughs, one side of his mouth curling up into a smile. He kind of deserves that response, and he’ll admit it. “I deserve that.”

Dallon’s still wide eyed, visibly alarmed even through the thin veil of alcohol. He raises his eyebrow and asks, “If I say his name three times, is he going to stab me in the back?”

“ _Funny_ ,” It isn’t, but Brendon smiles again anyways, glancing up as the waitress comes by with their beer refills. She sets the tray down on the table, and places a fresh glass on each of their coasters. “Hey, could we grab a plate of wings, too?”

She nods and smiles, patting Dallon on the shoulder as she heads to the back of the house to put their order in.

“You’re kind of freaking me out, here, man,” Dallon frowns, twisting his glass around. He lets the condensation stick to his fingertips as he studies Brendon carefully.

Brendon shakes his head and takes a sip of his beer.

“Don’t be freaked out,” He sighs, looking down at his phone. “I just need you to understand how important he was to me. If you don’t, the next thing I’m going to tell you will probably sound really fucking crazy.”

Frowning, Dallon doesn’t really look convinced. His eyebrows are practically halfway down his face as he edges forward and manages, “Okay…”

“When he left the band, he kind of ruined my life,” Brendon starts, but that doesn’t sound right. That’s too simple, too straight forward. It hadn’t been like that at all. He breaks down into laughter, and groans into his hand, “I threw a brick through his car window when I realized he was leaving me.”

When Brendon looks up and at Dallon through the gaps between his spread fingers, he isn’t surprised to see the genuinely confused expression painted across Dallon’s face. The corner of his lip is kind of quirked, an almost smile at the thought, but not really. Brendon thinks you really had to be there to understand how funny the whole situation had been. Devastating at the time, but hilarious in retrospect. Pete might get it.

“Ryan was everything to me,” Brendon continues, sighing. He covers his mouth with his hand, and adds, “I was a completely different person then. I was so happy. I’d never had my heartbroken, I was like a dog with a bone. God.”

Dallon nods, cautiously leading Brendon on.

“I was a kid. Just a stupid kid,” Brendon continues, breathing into his hand. He shakes his head and drops his hand down, letting his fingers curl loosely around the base of his glass. “I was so in love with him, and I don’t even know why. There was no rhyme or reason - he was such a shitty person. I loved him, though. I loved him more than I loved anything.”

Without meaning to Brendon trails off, staring into a spot on the tabletop as he fades into those memories. It was a dangerous road to begin going down, and he didn’t do it often, but god it was tempting to just disappear sometimes…

“I’m kind of freaking out about what could sound crazier than this,” Dallon frowns, leaning forwards.

It knocks Brendon out of his momentary daydream. He meets Dallon’s gaze, and can’t help the slow smile that creeps across his face.

“I got into a minor fender bender the other day,” Brendon explains, taking another sip of his beer. “I was talking on the phone, and I wasn’t paying attention, it was my fault but it could have happened to anyone.”

Dallon raises one eyebrow, and intones, “Okay…”

“Out of thirty seven thousand people in Venice Beach, I hit Ryan,” He laughs, slapping the edge of the table suddenly. He leans back against the booth seat, and looks at Dallon wide-eyed, asking, “How fucking crazy is that?”

To his credit, Dallon looks genuinely amused. He laughs a little bit, and shakes his head, admitting, “That is pretty crazy.”

“I gave him my information, you know, for the insurance or whatever. Just in case,” Brendon sighs, curling his fingers against the edge of the table. This is the first time he’s saying any of this out loud, to anyone, and he isn’t sure if it’s making him feel better or worse. The only thing he knows is that Dallon is about as neutral of a party as it gets. “He sent me an email last night.”

Dallon rolls his eyes and picks his beer up, asking, “Are you sure it wasn’t sent from fucking, what’s his name? Shane?”

“Ugh,” Brendon grunts. He can’t help the way he grimaces at the name. “It wasn’t Shane. It was Ryan.”

Looking interested despite himself, Dallon leans forward curiously, eyebrows raised as he asks, “Did he, like… what did he say?”

“It wouldn’t make a lot of sense,” Brendon frowns. It’s true - anyone could probably figure out the implication of Ryan’s words, but they would never understand how feverishly intimate the sentences were. Ryan built words into castles, and even though the email was short, maybe made out of sand, Brendon couldn’t bare to kick it down. “We’ve always… we’ve always had this thing about the ocean. It’s a long story, I don’t actually know where to start, but he apologized to me, and he told me that he missed me.”

Dallon looks a little skeptical, but they’re interrupted as the waitress comes back with their wings.

She sets the platter down between them, and gives them each a plate with a little bowl of dipping sauce.

“This side has the spicy wings,” She explains, pointing to half of the plate, and then the other. “This side is just roasted.”

Smiling, a quick pulse of the lips, Brendon looks up at her and says, “Thank you, looks delicious.”

“Thanks,” Dallon echoes, even though he looks a little seasick.

As she crosses the walkway to the booth opposite them, Brendon turns his attention back to Dallon. Dallon is thinking, he can tell, rolling the thoughts around his head. Dallon reaches for one of the wings, and makes a face when it’s way hotter than he was expecting it to be. He hisses, drops the wing to his plate, and reaches for his napkin instead. The moment is deliciously appropriate - the act of getting burnt - for the current conversation.

“Tell me I’m not crazy?” Brendon asks, watching the dejected, too hot to touch wing as it sits lonely on Dallon’s plate.

Dallon frowns, studying Brendon’s face for a moment. He finally says, “You’re not crazy. Just… be careful.”

“Fuck that is hot,” Brendon snaps, as he picks up a wing, as well. He drops it to his plate, and looks at Dallon. “I’m not like… making any long term plans here, or anything. I haven’t even emailed him back yet.”

Nodding, Dallon picks up his now cooled wing, and submerges it in his little pot of dipping sauce.

“I know you aren’t, I just…” He trails off, and looks at Brendon carefully. He’s heard enough stories and comparisons from the peanut gallery to have a gut feeling that this is probably not the best idea. What had Spencer called them once? Sid and Nancy, without the heroin. Dallon really doesn’t want to know for sure if that was an appropriate comparison or not. “I don’t want to worry about you. Make good choices.”

Brendon smiles, reaching for his beer. He says, “Speaking of, another round?”

~

_I have to admit your message caught me off guard._

_I thought you would fade into the landscape, stay there in Venice Beach._

_I wouldn’t trade my memories for anything but I won’t go back._

_I’m too old. I remember everything about you but I am fully aware of how far away that person is._

_I missed you too. I live with you every day. There’s a part of you in me I will never shake._

_I’m drunk. I’m stupid. I’ve been told I might be having a midlife crisis._

_I want to see you again. I realized five minutes on the side of the highway aren’t enough for me._

_Bden._


	4. tom's diner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks you guys so much for the kudos, and as always, I really appreciate any comments and feedback :)

Brendon isn’t surprised when he wakes up with a hangover the next morning.

He groans, rubbing one hand over his face, and then rolls over, frowning as he tugs the blanket up over his bare shoulder. It’s bright in the living room, beams of sunshine streaming through the dark bamboo slat blinds; spilling across the carpeted floor in thick, crooked stripes. He blinks, eyes fuzzy, and focuses in on the carefully framed artwork Pete’s hung up on the opposite wall - the ancient remains of what used to be Clandestine character sketches. 

_Ugh,_ he thinks, smacking his lips together. He immediately tastes the inside of his own mouth and grimaces. _Alcohol._

After a moment of sitting there in a puddle of his own misery, Brendon pushes himself up into a sitting position and reaches for his phone. He doesn’t even check his notifications, just unlocks the screen and texts Sarah, asking to postpone their morning Skype call until 10:30.

“Hey man, morning,” Pete grins, coming into the room. He’s wearing his stupid PYREX shorts and a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off down to his ribs, and he’s holding a dollar store issue bug zapper. It’s so unintentionally Pete that it makes Brendon smile. “We’re making french toast if you wanna get in on it. Have you seen a fly in here?”

Laughing, Brendon shakes his head and wipes the sleep out of one eye. He answers, “I don’t think so. I just woke up.”

“Little fucker,” Pete frowns, staring up at the middle of the ceiling. He looks so sure of himself that Brendon is compelled to follow his line of sight, too, and he soon finds himself watching the stucco for the first sign of the bug. After a minute of waiting, Pete relents and swings the bug zapper through the air dejectedly. He turns and asks Brendon, “Breakfast?”

Brendon nods and reaches for his own t-shirt, discarded on the arm of the couch.

“I’m in,” He nods, pulling it down over his head.

~

The three of them eat breakfast together, and then Brendon heads back to the living room to Skype Sarah and James.

His real estate agent calls a few minutes after that, and lets him know that she’s found a few properties that she thinks Brendon will really like. They make arbitrary plans to meet up later in the week, and after their conversation Brendon immediately texts Zack the date and time so he doesn’t forget. While he’s in his text app, he also sends Spencer a single eggplant emoticon. He’s been meaning to call him with thoughts about the demo, too, he thinks, frowning.

Licking his lips, Brendon flips over to his email. He doubts there’s anything particularly time sensitive in there, but with the lawyers cc’ing him on what seems like a thousand divorce related messages a day, it seems like the responsible thing to do.

“Oh fuck,” He swears, snapping the K between his teeth like bubblegum. The very first email in his inbox is a response from Ryan.

His stomach gets all fluttery, butterflies popping up from the graveyard he could have sworn he buried them in years ago. Biting his lip, he taps the email subject to open the message, and prepares to read the first line with one eye closed. He remembers writing the email last night, drunk and swaying in the backseat of an Uber on his way home from the BBQ restaurant, but he doesn’t _exactly_ remember everything he wrote.

He just hopes he didn’t get too poetic.

But Ryan’s response is short, familiar in its simplicity:

_i can be wherever you are.  
tell me when.  
rr._

Fuck, Brendon thinks to himself, fighting the urge to fan his own face like a Southern belle. He can’t stop the way his stomach is already doing somersaults, practically detaching from his insides at the very thought of being close to Ryan again. Running a hand through his hair nervously, he taps out his reply one handed:

_Tomorrow, 9PM, 4100 Sunset Boulevard.  
\- Bden_

He doesn’t look at the message again as he hits “send.”

~

Patrick’s back in the studio for the rest of the week, which means that Pete is left largely to his own devices.

There are a lot of nuances to Patrick’s character that have grown more complicated over the years, but his studio caveman routine is something that Brendon is pretty sure will never change. It’s like a grandfathered feature, forever part of the plan. The features and benefits include, but are not limited to: a lot of facial hair, smelly clothing, increased irritability, and a fondness for nostalgia and vintage equipment.

Which basically means: that night, Brendon and Pete order takeout and marathon an entire season of Dawson’s Creek on Netflix.

“Bury me with this fried shrimp,” Pete groans, spooning another half of the container onto his plate.

Brendon laughs and reaches for the chow mein. He’s never been a big Chinese food enthusiast, but it’s practically a part of Pete’s DNA.

“Seriously, why do they do this shit?” Brendon complains, when the inevitable ‘Are you still watching this episode?’ prompt pops up on the screen about thirty seconds into their fourth episode of the night. _The answer is always yes, I am a gigantic fucking tool who has now watched three episodes of a nineties teen drama, and yes, I am now fully invested._ “Give me that shit.”

Laughing, Pete kicks the Xbox controller over with one foot while simultaneously trying to activate the voice control.

“Xbox!” He yells, waving one arm over his head. Brendon turns the controller back on, and tries to balance his dinner plate on his chest with one hand as the buttons slowly light back up. “Xbox! Play!”

Brendon hits the A button and sighs, throwing the controller back to the floor as the episode resumes. He didn’t mean for it to happen, but he’s totally invested in Dawson and Joey’s arc.

“I totally would have fooled around with Dawson,” Pete says, reading Brendon’s mind as he leans back against the front of the couch. He’s sitting on the ground, a veritable cornucopia of takeout boxes opened on the carpet around him. Brendon’s pretty sure if Patrick saw the open styrofoam container full of pineapple and sweet and sour sauce, he’d have choice words for Pete. “Film geek, check. Peter Pan complex, check. Idealistic, double check.”

Grimacing, Brendon looks down at the top of Pete’s head and says, “Dude.”

“What?” Pete laughs, gesturing at the screen, where Dawson and Joey are having a particularly verbose encounter on his bed. They’re talking about Steven Spielberg or Jen Lindley or something. “Like you wouldn’t.”

Brendon makes a face and looks back at the TV screen. He probably would, but he’s not going to admit it.

They both fall into a comfortable silence as they watch the episode. Brendon can’t help his mind from wandering as he finishes his food up and sets his plate to the side, stretching his arms up and over his head. He hasn’t told Pete about Ryan yet. There hasn’t really been a good opening to, but beyond that, Brendon is a little nervous about Pete’s reaction.

Pete and Ryan hadn’t exactly parted on great terms, although they had managed to remain in touch over the years. 

It seemed like it was mostly out of necessity more than anything else: Ryan had always looked up to Pete in that weird daddy Warbucks way, and Pete had never been able to fully shake his Lost Boys complex. None of them really lived like that anymore, but at one time they had been a gang of misfits. It had been hard on everyone when their little band of brothers had quietly fallen apart.

At the centre of that had been Ryan, ego grown so big that it could no longer comfortably fit in the room.

Brendon studies Pete out of the corner of his eye. He’s concentrating on the television, mostly, even though every now and then his attention dips when he inevitably checks his phone or goes for another spring roll. He remembers Pete practically spitting in Ryan’s face when everything had first gone sideways, but to be fair, there had been a lot of other stuff going on, too. That was the beginning of the era where everything fell apart: it started with Ryan’s departure, and it ended with the dissolution of Pete’s marriage to Ashlee.

“Hey, you wanna go laser bowling tomorrow night?” Pete asks, looking over from his phone. Brendon just manages to glance away before Pete catches him staring like an idiot. “Someone just sent me an invite. West Hollywood.”

He feels like the lowest common denominator, especially after how kind Pete has been to him the last week, but Brendon can’t help the words tumbling out of his mouth.

“I wish,” Brendon lies, practically biting his tongue. “I promised Sarah I would come by for a family dinner tomorrow night.”

It’s a bold lie - if Sarah tweets any kind of illusion to her actual plans for tomorrow night, it’s all over - but Pete buys it, hook, line and sinker.

~

The next day, Brendon is practically vibrating out of his shoes with nervousness.

At six he makes himself a sandwich, just to get some food into his stomach. By seven he’s taken to chain smoking on the porch and jogging laps around the yard, ducking under Bronx’s swing set and around the BBQ pit. When eight o’clock finally rolls around he gets himself dressed, and downs a finger of Scotch just to settle his jangling nerves. At first he has no idea what he should wear, but thankfully he’s only got a knapsack full of clothes to pick from. He inevitably settles on a pair of black jeans and a t-shirt.

His cab ride to the bar is long, but not long enough. He aches to have more time to prepare for this, while simultaneously wanting to have Ryan at his fingertips right away. It’s already been too long.

If the cab driver notices Brendon is nervous while he’s paying for the ride, he doesn’t let on.

Brendon stands outside the bar at nine o’clock on the dot, and closes his eyes for a moment, trying to keep his hands from trembling.


	5. the sun and the moon

Brendon used to be under the allusion that they would be together forever.

Maybe he had just been too young to understand what that really meant, to love somebody like that. God, he’d tried to make sense of it. With the exception of James, he has still never cared for someone so wildly, so recklessly, as he did Ryan. It used to be written all over his face; he wore his feelings on a sandwich board, and he would spin on command for absolutely anyone who asked to see.

That’s the person he had been, and he’d been proud of himself.

All these years later, at the beginning and end of all things, he still remembers what it felt like to love someone like that.

~

He’s nervous. He checks his watch one last time, 9:03 PM.

Brendon licks his lips, unable to stop fidgeting as he stands on the sidewalk, and looks towards the bar doors one more time. The bouncer is still standing there, watching him curiously, the same expression on his face that he’d had when Brendon first arrived ten minutes ago. Brendon offers a weak smile and a slight nod, and then turns back to the street. He wedges his fingers into the pockets of his jeans. 

A crazy voice in the back of his head is telling him that Ryan won’t come at all.

It’s all just an elaborate joke being played, somehow, expertly designed to hurt Brendon after a long time of successfully not allowing himself to be hurt. He thinks about Sarah, and the sour look she would get on her face whenever Ryan came up in conversation. He thinks about the handful of times Ryan and Sarah met in passing during the Honda Civic Tour, how they hadn’t liked one another from the start. He thinks about how Sarah had reasons, real reasons, to not like Ryan. He thinks about how Ryan had no business ever disliking her.

He’s itching for one more cigarette when he hears Ryan walk up behind him.

“Hey,” Ryan greets, like this is nothing out of the ordinary. Just two friends, hanging out.

Brendon’s nervous system floods with adrenaline at the sound of Ryan’s voice. He turns around, and with a nervous pulse of a smile, replies, “Hi.”

“Sorry I’m late,” Ryan apologizes, one hand going to the back of his head. He touches his hair nervously. His voice is the same: low, no life, deadpan. It makes Brendon’s body ache with nostalgia. “Do you want to go inside?”

It’s strange, to suddenly have him like this. When they had exchanged emails, Brendon was hidden behind a veil of alcohol, comfortable with the near anonymity of electronic communication. Now, with Ryan in the flesh in front of him, Brendon has no idea what to say. It seems like such a disconnect from the aching, almost poetic emails they had exchanged earlier in the week.

“Yeah, of course,” Brendon answers. He holds one arm out, letting Ryan go first.

Ryan goes, and Brendon follows.

~

Inside the bar, Ryan stops short, scratching at one ear as he surveys the room.

It’s crowded, but not obnoxiously so. Brendon is so busy surveying the crowd that he almost bumps into Ryan from behind, stopping just short of walking into him dick first. He takes a step backwards, his eyes trained on Ryan’s shoulders. Ryan’s just a hair taller than him, he always has been, though it had seemed more obvious back when he’d always had a hat on his head.

“Grab a booth,” Ryan says, half turning back to Brendon and nodding his head in the direction of the seating area. “I’ll get the drinks.”

Brendon nods, knotting his eyebrows, and heads in the direction Ryan had pointed him in. He weaves through the tables, smiling in apology at one woman when he accidentally knocks into her elbow, and makes his way towards one of the last empty booths. It’s tucked in the far corner, almost hidden in the way that the draped fabric hangs down from the ceiling, and it makes Brendon feel all hot under the collar just looking at it.

He sits down, feeling a bit stilted as he stretches his legs out underneath the table and takes a deep breath.

It’s hard not to watch Ryan, even though he feels like a bit of a creep for doing so. It all just feels unreal. Two weeks ago, Brendon was waking up in bed beside Sarah, and drifting aimlessly throughout the day that followed; tonight, he’s meeting up with Ryan for drinks, and watching him move through the hazy curtain of doubt that Brendon can’t quite shake. He’s still waiting for the inevitable moment that will come when someone pulls the rug out from underneath his feet.

When Ryan begins to walk away from the bar, two drinks balanced in his hands, Brendon snaps his gaze to the side instead.

“I hope you, uh… still like scotch,” Ryan says, setting the drinks down awkwardly in the middle of the table.

Brendon feels his cheeks flush. He thinks about the scotch he drank earlier in the night, and nods, replying, “It’s my favorite. Thanks.”

“No problem,” Ryan shrugs, settling himself in his side of the booth. It’s strange, trying to reconcile this version of Ryan with the one that still lives in the deep parts of Brendon’s brain. The last time he’d seen Ryan in the flesh, he’d still favored paisley shirts and wide belts. Now, his hair is properly styled, and he’s wearing a leather jacket and jeans, an expensive watch around his wrist. Ryan clears his throat, and adds, “Thanks for meeting me.”

Frowning, Brendon glances down at Ryan’s drink for lack of anywhere else to look. He can’t be sure, but it looks like a rum and coke.

“I wanted to,” Brendon answers, speaking carefully. He’s unsure of the strange lilt Ryan has to his voice.

Ryan nods, unable to meet Brendon’s eyes. A quick pulse of a frown appears on his face before he picks up his glass and takes a long sip of his drink, holding the straw to one side with one finger as he does so. Nervous, Brendon sips his scotch, too, letting the booze wash the uncertainty out of his mouth. Johnnie Walker Black, his favorite.

“Ugh,” Ryan manages after a second, looking physically pained as he sets his drink down. At first Brendon thinks that it’s from the bite of the alcohol, the sting of his throat, but then Ryan blurts out, “I’m in Alcoholics Anonymous.”

It’s probably the last thing that Brendon was expecting Ryan to say, especially with a drink in one hand. He’s so surprised that he laughs without meaning to, a nervous reaction, loud and abrupt. It startles them both. Brendon immediately feels like a piece of shit for his tasteless response, and lets himself blush a little bit under the unwavering look Ryan is now giving him.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” He babbles, nervously rubbing a hand over his suddenly sweaty forehead. “I wasn’t expecting that. We’re in a bar. You snorted cocaine off of my stomach once.”

Ryan flushes at that, heat creeping up his neck as he closes his eyes momentarily. He gathers himself, and manages to reply, “It’s just soda.”

“Fuck,” Brendon swears, now fully resigned to the fact that he’s inevitably going to bumble through the remainder of his conversation. He swallows, licks his lips, and thinks about Ryan offering to go to the bar himself. An addict ordering a friend a drink. Fuck. For lack of anything better to say, Brendon repeats himself, “I’m sorry.”

Steadying himself, Ryan nods and then kind of half shrugs. He replies, “It’s okay. I don’t really tell many people.”

“How long?” Brendon can’t help himself from asking.

Ryan taps his fingers against the side of his glass, rolls his tongue against his bottom lip, and answers, “Six months. Six months before that, too, but they don’t count anymore.”

“Congratulations,” Brendon says. He means it - he never thought Ryan would do something for himself like that. All of a sudden he’s even more speechless than he was earlier, unsure of how to navigate the conversation that Ryan has begun to lead them through.

It’s deliciously inappropriate, but Brendon quickly throws another gulp of scotch back.

“That’s like…” Ryan trails off, looking to the side before he glances back to Brendon’s face. The candle between them is doing all kinds of magic tricks to the usually pallid color of Ryan’s skin. Brendon is mesmerized. “That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you in person.”

Brendon feels his stomach drop a little bit. He frowns and replies, “Okay.”

“One of the steps is like, making amends,” Ryan explains, now twisting both of his hands together. He frowns and then chews on his bottom lip for a second, looking torn as he stares across the table at Brendon. Brendon nods, not really following, until Ryan continues. “I uh, I wasn’t - I wouldn’t have just called you out of nowhere to apologize for, you know. All of the shitty things I did. Making amends, it’s, it’s different.”

Nodding vaguely, Brendon leans forward, unable to stop himself from gravitating.

“I’m a beginner at this AA stuff,” Brendon admits. It’s not a joke, his voice is genuinely honest. “I don’t know what it means to make amends.”

Ryan frowns momentarily, and twists his hands together. He’s nervous, too. For some reason that calms Brendon down. He feels his stomach settle, just a little bit, knowing that on some plane, Ryan still feels the same way that he does.

“Making amends is... it’s different,” Ryan starts off, repeating himself. Brendon nods, and waits for him to continue, “The things I did to you, and said to you, I, uh, it wasn’t right. If I called you up out of nowhere after five years and apologized, that would be for my benefit. It wouldn’t fix the things that I did to you. I think, I think it would just bring all of those memories back to the surface again.”

This is not the type of conversation Brendon ever thought that he would have in a bar, of all places. He takes another sip of his scotch.

“When you make amends with somebody, you, it’s, it’s kind of like paying them back - for everything,” Ryan explains. He’s been practically looking everywhere but at Brendon, but when he says ‘everything’, he meets Brendon’s eye. “Physically, or, monetarily, or. You know, whatever the situation calls for, I guess.”

Brendon nods. He’s going to have to Google this later. Ryan is trying, though, so he replies, “Sure.”

“Like I said, I, I wouldn’t just, you know - bust into your life again, just to apologize. To make myself feel better,” He pauses to take a sip of his drink, nervously tapping the glass as he sets it back down against the table top. He finally breaks and laughs a little, “I just wasn’t expecting to see you walk up after I got rear ended. I think - _now_ , I think - stuff like that happens for a reason.”

One corner of his mouth lifting up into a smile, Brendon replies, “I agree.”

“Well, I haven’t quite figured out how to make amends to you yet,” Ryan continues, voice honest. He squints across the table at Brendon, looking at him carefully, studying his face. “But, you know. I’m working on it.”

Brendon feels his stomach tighten like a spring, and bounce up into his throat. He swallows the feeling down, and says, “I appreciate that.”

“So… yeah,” Ryan nods again, like his actions are the punctuation to his thoughts. He takes another gulp of soda, and then manages, “What’s new with you?”

That makes Brendon laugh again, surprised as a dam of joy bursts in his chest. This is almost like having his old friend back, the one he’d known before they were ever romantically involved with one another. It’s obvious that Ryan has made some improvements to himself over the last few months, but other things - they just stay the same.

“Well, we have, what? Five years to catch up on,” Brendon grins, signalling for the waitress with one hand before he asks, “Where do you want to start?”

~

The night disappears quickly, like sand slipping through Brendon’s fingers.

It’s hard, to cover so many milestones - share so much information - with someone who he used to intimately share those moments with. Ryan asks about Spencer a lot, cautious in the words that he chooses. Brendon assumes he feels guilty over how their friendship ultimately ended, in a blaze of prescription painkillers and nasty, mean words.

He keeps the conversation as neutral as he can, while telling Ryan about Spencer’s struggles over the years. It’s the Cliff’s Notes version, really: Spencer went on hiatus for a year, before ultimately leaving the band. Recently, he’s been back in the mix as a studio drummer and producer. He’s been making a lot of demos, and doing really well.

“After he and Linda got married, he settled down,” Brendon nods, dipping a yam fry into the chipotle sauce sat between them. “He’s doing much better now.”

Ryan is picking at the yam fries, too, still the appetite of a bird just like Brendon remembers. He asks, “Linda?”

“Oh, sorry,” Brendon apologizes, covering his mouth with one hand as he chews and swallows. As he reaches for his drink to take another sip, he simultaneously pulls his phone from his pocket with his other hand. When they’d all gone to Disneyland with James a few weeks ago, he’d taken a few pictures of Spencer and Linda together in front of the Haunted Mansion. “This is Linda. She’s fucking awesome. She’s the one who got Spencer back, you know… back in shape.”

Nodding, Ryan watches the screen intently as Brendon flips through the other photos he took that day.

Spencer wearing Mouse ears, Linda and Sarah’s backs as they look up at Cinderella’s Castle, a tourist wearing a matching visor and fanny pack combo. They’re both laughing, Ryan leaning right into Brendon’s space, when Brendon flips to the next photo. It’s a picture he had taken of Spencer holding James - they’d been on Mainstreet, waiting for Sarah and Linda, when Chip & Dale had walked by. Spencer had been holding James already, so he’d moved in between the two chipmunks while Brendon snapped the photo.

“Is that…” Ryan trails off, pointing one finger at the screen as he flickers his gaze over to Brendon’s face. “Is that Linda’s kid, or something?”

 _And here it goes,_ Brendon thinks, cringing to himself. He should have said something earlier, but their conversation hadn’t moved away from their old clique quite yet.

“No, thats,” Brendon licks his lips, and swipes to the next photo. It’s a selfie Brendon took of the two of them the next day at the side of the pool. They’re both wearing matching sunglasses, and Brendon is puffing out his own cheeks to be as chubby as James’. “He’s mine. His name is James, he’s two. He’s incredible.”

That visibly knocks Ryan for a loop. He looks at Brendon’s face, making sure that Brendon is sincere, before he manages to recover and say, “Wow, that’s, that’s - congratulations, man. I had no idea. I didn’t… I didn’t hear it from anyone.”

“Thanks,” Brendon smiles, swiping to the next photo. It’s another one of James, sitting on the living room floor with a toy xylophone in-between his legs. It’s the same bright, rainbow colored Fisher Price one that Brendon remembers from his own childhood. Sarah’s feet are in the background, bright red flats on their restored wooden floors, the sun streaming in the window behind her. It almost puts Brendon back in that moment so fast his head spins. “We didn’t really - we announced it, but, you know. Quietly.”

Ryan nods, echoing a, “Yeah,” as he settles back in his seat. He takes another sip of his drink, thinking for a moment before he asks, “How is Sarah?”

“She’s great,” Brendon replies, no hesitation behind his voice. He clicks his phone off and sets it face down on the table, going back to his drink instead. He picks his glass up, and chases the straw with his open mouth. “It’s been weird, but, you know. Most divorces probably are. I’ve been spending a lot of time with Pete lately - he’s kind of a veteran.”

Smiling, Ryan settles back in his seat and watches Brendon’s face, one hand crawling out to snag another one of the yam fries. He dips it in the chipotle sauce thoughtfully as Brendon takes another sip of his drink, watching Ryan back.

“I really missed you,” Brendon says, surprising himself. He laughs and adds, “I hated you, too, but mostly I just missed you.”

Ryan laughs, as well, and they share a moment, a ribbon strung between them that pulls their bodies an inch closer after so many years spent purposely drifting apart. In that moment, Brendon realizes that they’re the only two people on earth who could ever understand this, the electricity crackling between them, the way that the universe seems to want them to gravitate in one another’s orbit forever.

Sitting there, looking at Ryan smile at him, Brendon realizes that, for the first time, he’s comforted at the thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would love to know what you guys think so far! I'm just kind of winging it, and would appreciate any feedback at all.


	6. i wanna get better

The next morning, Brendon’s heart is whistling a song.

“Hey man,” Pete smiles at him, bouncing down the stairs. His hair is damp, freshly showered. “How was your dinner?”

Brendon looks up from where he had been busy lurching down the hallway. Light heart, but a heavy head, and a total mess in the early morning light. It had been an adventure stumbling home last night in the dark, and now, he finds himself hungover on expensive scotch, nostalgia, and Ryan.

“Great,” He says, formulating an answer as he squints up at Pete. His voice is deep and rough as he swallows and adds, “We barbequed steak, had a few drinks by the pool. Typical night for the Urie kids.”

It hurts to lie, but it would hurt more to tell the truth. Brendon hasn’t figured anything out yet; he wouldn’t be able to explain himself if anyone knew.

“Nice,” Pete appraises, none the wiser as he reaches the bottom step. They’re the same height when they stand like this, Brendon thinks, his brain firing in strange directions. Pete surveys Brendon carefully as he zips his hoodie up to his chin, one eyebrow raising. He hesitates for a moment before he asks, voice curious, “You wanna come with me to get coffee?”

He must see the heavy bags hanging underneath Brendon’s eyes, dark and full of recently recovered emotional baggage.

“God, yes,” Brendon groans.

Thoughts of last night click through his head like someone flipping through a picture book. He hadn’t made it back home until well after four in the morning, when he’d managed to slip through the back patio doors unnoticed. Thankfully he hadn’t set the security alarms off. He’d been a little drunk, a little lucky, and a little bit of a lot of things that he hadn’t felt in a while.

Once the 4100 bar closed for the night, he and Ryan had walked around the neighborhood together. They’d talked a lot; now that they had been uncorked, there was no stopping the fountain of stories and anecdotes they had both missed from one another’s lives. When Brendon ran low on smokes, Ryan had waited outside a gas station they’d found, standing by one of the deserted pumps while Brendon ran inside. Brendon watched him through the panelled glass windows while he’d paid for his purchase, desperately trying to get his fill.

Now, in Pete’s front hallway, it’s not much more than a few hours after all of that.

Brendon tries to smooth his hair down and wipe the sleep out of his eyes simultaneously. In retrospect, he probably didn’t need that last pack of cigarettes, and he’s paying for it this morning with a tight throat and congested lungs. Ryan had looked so different, he muses, bending down to look at himself in the reflection of a piece of artwork framed and hung along the stairs. He’d looked so much older, road worn, weary.

He can relate to that feeling.

“I’m taking your car!” Pete bellows up the stairs, one hand digging around in Patrick’s jacket pocket. He snakes them out and then holds them up in the air like Indiana Jones as Patrick yells something back, voice unintelligible. Pete makes a face, his hand drifting back down until he’s just holding the keys at his hip, ring looped around his finger. He looks confused, and then yells at Brendon’s face, “I can’t hear what you’re saying!”

 _Fuck_ , Brendon thinks to himself, ears ringing. There’s shuffling upstairs, and then Patrick wanders out onto the top landing, rubbing a towel over his head.

“I said, bring me coffee, too,” Patrick says, the very definition of anticlimactic. As an afterthought, he adds, “Are you going to that same place?”

Brendon frowns, still reeling from the shock of Pete’s booming voice, and rubs one hand over his ear as he looks up at Patrick above them. Patrick looks sticky, fresh out of the shower as he adjusts the flannel sleeping pants around his waist and waits for Pete’s response. Brendon pretends he doesn’t notice the hickies all over Patrick’s side and stomach. He’s a polite house guest.

“Yeah,” Pete nods. 

Pete is smiling the same way he always does when Patrick is within sight, staring up at Patrick like he’s a man on a stage - and in their house, he might as well be. Pete’s life has always revolved him, happily, the same way that Patrick has always revolved around him in return. A perfect balance, the ultimate harmony. The chemical and the reaction.

Brendon would be a little jealous, he thinks, if he hadn’t recently set his own eyes on a different universe entirely.

“Get a box of those blueberry squares, too,” Patrick adds. He’s still rubbing the towel through his hair.

A large part of their conversation seems to happen behind the scenes, without either of them speaking aloud. Brendon watches, his gaze ping-ponging between the two of them as they watch one another for a second more. Just one more second, Brendon muses, knowing what that felt like, to want to get your fill before it walked away.

Once there’s been a distinct lull their conversation, Pete holds the key ring up and jingles it until Patrick rolls his eyes and turns around, wandering back in the direction of their bedroom.

“Alright,” Pete grins - but it’s different - before he nudges his elbow against Brendon’s arm with a simple, “Let’s go.”

~

Pete isn’t a terrible driver, but he drives like a roadie: someone who has a destination to get to, without a lot of time to get there.

“So, you guys got all the paperwork figured out?” He asks, leaning back in the leather seat.

They’re idling at a red light, and Brendon feels oddly protective of the bakery box full of blueberry squares on the floor between his feet.

“Yeah, as far as I can tell,” Brendon sighs, stretching one arm out. He studies the faded lines of his tattoo in the bright mid-morning sun, and twists back to look at Pete, “How was that, for you and Ashlee? I never… at the time, I never asked.”

Shrugging, Pete sucks on the straw of his iced coffee and waits for the light to change. The ice cubes rattle. After a second, he answers, “It was hell.”

“Sorry,” Brendon apologizes, even though it’s too late to matter anymore. He remembers when all of that first happened to Pete, back when Patrick had been bumped down to a guest starring role as he toured around the country with his solo record. Pete used to sit in his empty mansion and eat pills like candy. Everyone had known, but nobody had been able to do anything about it.

That’s just Pete being Pete, everyone said. Brendon had been young enough at the time to believe it.

“Ah, it’s old history now,” Pete half grins, teeth sharp looking as the red light changes back to green and he stomps his foot down onto the gas. He’s driving one handed, fingers curled around the top of the leather steering wheel, the other holding his coffee up as he chews on the straw. Brendon doesn’t think that he’s going to add anything more or elaborate, but then he says, “Everyone is better for it. It couldn’t have happened any other way.”

Frowning, Brendon leans back in his seat and slowly pries the lid off his coffee.

“You and Ashlee have a good relationship now,” Brendon says.

He’d meant to ask it like a question, but as a statement it sounds more sure. The final word.

“Oh yeah,” Pete nods, glancing over his shoulder as he changes lanes. The little vinyl toy bear hanging underneath the rear view mirror sways as the car moves, spinning around on its string. Brendon watches it, and then looks back down to his coffee. He’s slowly moving it towards his mouth for his first sip unencumbered by the lid, when Pete adds, “I don’t love her anymore, but she’s important. She’s the one who made me grow up. Without her, I’m just Peter Pan.”

That’s true, Brendon muses. When he first met Pete, he’d had an affinity for animal costumes, nut shots, and punching holes in walls. He’d been the quintessential latch key kid, lost with all kinds of places to go and all the world’s resources to get there.

“That’s how I feel about Sarah,” Brendon sighs, carefully maneuvering his feet around the box so he can stretch his legs out. “I do love her, though.”

Pete shrugs, shoulder checking again as they take the exit that leads back to he and Patrick’s gated community.

“It’s different for everyone,” He says, glancing over at Brendon. “Bronx means everything to me, so Ashlee matters.”

Brendon nods. Pete might sound cold, but Brendon can appreciate where he’s coming from. Without a child involved, she would just be an ex. The mistake you made, the alternate path you could have taken. What good was it to think about all that?

“I’ve never stayed friends with an ex,” Brendon admits. He knows that with the exception of Ashlee, Pete hasn’t either, so he’s not sure why he feels like it’s a confession - but it is, and it weighs him down. He laughs a little, taking another sip of his coffee before he adds, “I couldn’t even stay in the same band.”

It’s not a joke that he would usually make, to be self deprecating like that, and he knows Pete knows it. Pete kind of warbles a smile, glancing over quickly, his eyebrows raised up to the line where his beanie is stretched across his forehead. Brendon catches it, and smiles back. He never would have made that joke before last night, but now, now it’s kind of freeing.

“You okay, man?” Pete asks, trying to keep the tone of his voice light. He sets his coffee down in the cup holder, dad more engaged.

Brendon thinks about it. He really, really thinks about it, and it’s a fleeting thought, but it’s there. It’s real. But he doesn’t even know what he would say, how he would explain Ryan’s recent involvement in his life. And without being able to explain it, he is sure Pete would not understand. Despite their similar paths, this is different. He’s walked through thorns to get here.

“I’ve actually never been better,” He laughs, kicking one foot up onto the dash.

Pete levels him another smile; Brendon knows he doesn’t believe it right now, but that’s okay.

~

Later that day, Brendon’s sitting outside on the porch with a cigarette, his feet crossed at the ankles.

Pete and Patrick have gone over to Ashlee’s for dinner. She’s making tacos for everyone, her husband and second child included, so they left around four with a bottle of wine and a tub of guacamole under their arms. Pete must have tipped Patrick off to what Brendon had said in the car, because he’d been hovering, offering Brendon food and smiles and light hands on the shoulder.

He actually has shit to get done tonight, and it will be good to knock everything out without the distraction of friends. Family.

His realtor has sent him another handful of links to properties, up and coming neighborhoods and new subdivisions and classic lofts in WeHo. Brendon just has to pick one. Sarah sent him a picture earlier too, a photograph of his side of the closet, empty and in boxes. She’d been giving the boxes a thumbs down in the photo, skin white washed with flash, and below it, she’d added a frowny emoji.

Brendon relates to that emoji more and more, these days.

 _Let’s go out to dinner tomorrow night,_ he texts now, cigarette balanced between his pointer and middle fingers as he types with his thumb. _Just you and me._

It’s important, to maintain his connection with Sarah. It’s what makes him half of the man he is now, and he doesn’t want that to slip away.

But of course the times, they are a changin. Right after he’s sent Sarah her message, he navigates to a different conversation altogether.

 _Breakfast tomorrow?_ he types, and sends the message to Ryan without thinking twice.

~

He gets his response ten minutes later, when he’s looking at photos of a place in Malibu that is way out of his price range.

_anytime, anywhere._


	7. rose garden

Ryan is talking about Z, and Brendon can’t help the sour look that pulls his face in two different directions.

Apparently last summer the two of them took a road trip down to the Grand Canyon, where Z almost drove their rental car out of the parking lot, and right over the protective barriers. A park ranger was in attendance, and as a direct result they are both now banned from entering any National Park in Arizona. Last summer Brendon and Sarah vacationed in Florida, and spent their time strapping floaties onto James’ chubby arms whenever he was within a few feet of water.

In Florida, that’s approximately 90% of the time.

“What?” Ryan laughs at one point, cutting himself off when he catches Brendon’s expression. He reaches across the table for another piece of bacon.

They both ended up sleeping past breakfast, so they found a brunch place instead. It actually worked out in their benefit, though, because now they’re working with a delicious spread, plates and plates of food set out for them on a round patio table: scrambled eggs, bacon, fruit, bagels, quiche. They’re practically real housewives.

“No - nothing,” Brendon replies instantly, cutting himself off with a laugh. He shakes his head as Ryan catches his eye, and smiles at the table top for a minute, trying to gather himself. He ends up making another face without meaning to as he looks back over to Ryan. He feels like a brunch king, right now, with the entire outside area to themselves. The waitress even dragged the heat lamp over so they wouldn’t be cold. “I don’t - I’m not. I’m sure Z is very nice. And very… sincere.”

That makes Ryan laugh again, eyebrows raising as he points a finger and says, “I’m telling her you said that. You would probably like her, you know.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Brendon smiles back, trying to be diplomatic.

He distinctly remembers going on a drunken rant that included, but was not limited to, how much he hated Z Berg. It had happened in New York, at an after hours bar, when a mutual acquaintance unknowingly brought her name up in passing. She was playing at the Arclight, just her and her guitar. Afterwards Dallon patted his back and offered him another beer, and Sarah had just been embarrassed, legs crossed, staring over her own shoulder as Brendon verbally tore Z apart.

It isn’t a good memory, but it’s an important one.

“You’ll like her,” Ryan nods again, sounding more sure of himself this time. He snaps his bacon in half, and chews on it experimentally as he looks over at Brendon, sunglasses slid low on his nose. He raises his eyebrows and adds, “She’s one of my really good friends.”

Brendon reaches for his glass of orange juice - no mimosa this morning, in solidarity with Ryan - and laughs, “That’s what I hear from Ryland.”

“It’s not like that,” Ryan amends, shaking his head. He’s chewing on his bacon carefully, alternating between looking at the next bite he’s going to take, and watching Brendon across the table. Brendon gets the uncontrollable urge to spoon more food onto Ryan’s plate. Ryan snags another piece of bacon, and bites into it with his back teeth. “We were together for a while, but we aren’t anymore. She’s with some actor now.”

Shrugging, Brendon reaches for the fruit salad, and dumps half of it onto his plate in one go. He’s also eaten most of the omelette platter, and the sausage.

“So are you…” Brendon starts to ask, but inevitably trails off, glad that they’re both wearing sunglasses. He feels like he’s got the crazy eyes right now. His sentence doesn’t go anywhere, so he clears his throat and tries again as he reaches for a fork. “Are you seeing anyone else? Right now?”

Ryan lifts one shoulder, ‘meh’ personified, and takes one of the melon balls from the bowl of fruit salad Brendon just set back down.

“No,” He answers, putting the melon ball in his mouth. Ryan pushes his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose. As he chews, he wipes his hand off on an already crumpled napkin, and answers, “Not since before AA.”

His voice is low, warm, familiar. It’s always complimented Brendon’s, and the thought alone does all kinds of things to Brendon’s insides.

“Ah,” Brendon nods. That makes sense. He doesn’t know much about rehab or recovery programs, but it sounds right, to battle your demons by yourself.

At least to start, he thinks. It would be a very lonely life after that.

“To be honest…” Ryan starts, trailing off. He gets stuck staring at the sky over Brendon’s shoulder, and seems to consider his words carefully as he chews and frowns, chews and frowns. When he snaps back to reality, he’s wrinkling his nose and looking at Brendon again. “I guess I just haven’t really been looking.”

Brendon drags the butter dish towards himself, and then reaches over it for a muffin. He thinks he spotted a lone raspberry one in the back of the basket.

“Fair enough,” He says, because he can appreciate that. He frowns when the raspberry muffin turns out to be cranberry. It’s still better than oatmeal or blueberry, though, so he rips it in half, taking the good part and leaving the bottom half in the basket. “I’m not looking forward to dating again. It’s just, it’s weird. You know? I don’t even know what I want right now.”

He has no idea why he’s confessing this to Ryan, of all people. He hasn’t even broached the idea of dating again with Sarah, much less anyone else.

“You’ll know when you get there,” Ryan says, the relationship guru, like it’s as simple as that. But you know what - maybe sometimes, it is.

Brendon considers this as he’s buttering his muffin, and then pauses to smile across the table at Ryan crookedly.

“Yeah,” He agrees, licking his lips and shaking his head a little as he lowers his gaze back to the muffin in his hand. “I guess I will.”

~

Brendon has a meeting with his realtor at three, so after brunch he skates across the neighborhood to a promising sounding two bedroom.

It’s nice, clean and modern and kind of his style. The realtor points out how the kitchen has recently been redone, and the fact that there’s enough room to expand up into the attic if he wanted to in the future. As Brendon opens and closes kitchen cupboards, he frowns, trying to imagine putting his own cereal boxes and coffee grounds in them.

The house doesn’t fit, it’s not right. There’s no pool for James to swim in, and there’s barely any grass for the dogs.

In fact, it’s hard to shake the idea of living anywhere else other than home. Sarah’s still his home, he realizes, as he pokes his head in a broom closet and switches on the overhead light. He’s never really had his own home, he went straight from tour buses to hotel rooms to marriage.

“Well, think about it,” The realtor says, interrupting his thoughts as she closes and locks the front door behind them.

Brendon stands on the stoop behind her, fidgeting with the hair on the back of his skull. He admits, “It’s not really my thing.”

“What about the loft on Melrose?” She asks, pulling the sunglasses down from the top of her head. She holds them out in front of her, shaking out her hair before she slides them onto her nose.

The loft on Melrose was okay, too. Lots of space, nice high ceilings and brand new wooden floors. There hadn’t been anything wrong with it, either.

“Ehh,” He shrugs, leaning against the iron railings that run either side of the front steps. His shoulders are awkwardly up around his ears as the railing takes the majority of his weight. When she frowns at him and squints behind her sunglasses, he adds, “I like West Hollywood… I don’t like the idea of living on top of a Chinese restaurant. I have a kid, remember?”

That makes her reconsider her sour facial expression. She frowns briefly, before nodding and starting down the front steps.

“There’s a property that just came on the market, it’s five minutes away from Coldwater Canyon,” She says, half talking over her shoulder as she bounces down the stairs, jewelry jangling.

Brendon frowns, nods, and pushes away from the railing to follow her down the steps. Pete and Patrick live in that general area, and he certainly wouldn’t mind having them in the same neighborhood. It’s also within a fifteen minute drive of Sarah and James.

“Let’s go see that,” He nods, following her down the walkway.

~

The place by Coldwater Canyon is his. He knows it the moment he walks in the front door.

It’s got everything he wanted, from the foldaway living room doors that lead into the backyard, to a play area for James and a place for his piano. He walks into the kitchen and he can see himself stumbling around in the morning, making coffee and blending smoothies. His TV will fit in the sunken wall over the fireplace, and he can finally buy a mini keg to keep under the bar that separates the kitchen from the living area.

There’s also a huge steam shower that he can practically see himself boning someone in already. It’s the real deal.

“This is it,” He tells his realtor, hunched over the kitchen island. He taps his fingers against the granite nervously. “Can we put in an offer? Do you think anyone else already has?”

She shakes her head, and starts to pull forms out of her three ring binder.

“It was only listed this afternoon,” She tells him, tossing a pen in Brendon’s direction with a smile. “So let’s get your offer in, before someone else does.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really appreciate your feedback, guys, thank you so much :)


	8. everlong

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't couldn't get this chapter right so fuck it, I'm setting it free!

They’re driving through the neighborhood late that night, the bright headlights of Brendon’s car stretching stripes over curbs, recycling bins, and well manicured beds of flowers. This used to be his home.

Sarah looks beautiful tonight. She’s wearing a dark blue dress Brendon’s never seen before, and she’s pulled her hair back, pinned up on top of her head like a retro pin-up girl. It wasn’t until tonight that he first realized how strange this has actually been, not seeing her every day. It was almost a surprise when she’d first dropped down into the passenger seat with a smile and a half hug.

“I’m so full,” She says, as they pull back into the driveway. Spencer’s car is already there. Sarah looks over, and adds, “Next time, remind me not to order a family sized bowl of pasta after forty minutes of appetizers.”

Laughing, Brendon puts the car in park, and kills the engine. He grins at her and says, “Lie to me and say you didn’t love it.”

“Oh, I loved it,” Sarah answers. She looks down at herself as she forces her stomach out into a beer belly, and when Brendon laughs, she pushes her chin down until it looks like she’s got at least four extras. She deepens her voice until it’s bridging on Fat Bastard, and repeats, “ _I loved it.”_

Brendon unclips his seatbelt and laughs, shaking his head. He tells her, “You’re ridiculous.”

“I’m _full_ ,” She reiterates, laughing too.

They get out of the car and start up the front walkway together, Sarah trailing after Brendon as she tries to fix the heel on her shoe.

Brendon stops halfway up the walkway, laughing as he catches sight of Spencer through the living room window. The blinds are still wide open, and all the lights are on. The combination practically turns the house into a fishbowl.

He’s still laughing as he waves for Sarah to catch up. She comes up behind him, still walking a little crookedly on her heel. Brendon grins back at her, and then nods his head towards the front window. Spencer is standing there, behind their couch. He’s halfway back to the kitchen but clearly more focused on whatever’s on the TV, as he grimaces at the screen and scratches his belly with one hand.

“Oh my god,” Sarah says, starting to laugh again. Spencer is so absorbed in the television, he doesn’t notice them staring.

Brendon grins and starts jogging towards the front door.

“Worst babysitter ever,” He calls over his shoulder.

~

Inside the house, they kick their shoes off in the front hallway. Brendon stops to shrug his suit jacket off, as well.

Two feet in the door, and Brendon already notices the little things that have changed. Sarah’s hung her own artwork in the frames over the front hallway table; on the floor below them, Brendon sees his own belongings in a moving box. In the closet, his winter jacket is no longer hanging where it used to, and none of his shoes are left on the shoe rack.

He shakes it off - they agreed to split everything down the middle, and that’s all Sarah is doing - and then starts down the hallway.

They find Linda standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding a very tired looking James to her chest. His head is leaning against the curve of her shoulder, and he’s got tears streaming down his rosy cheeks.

“Hey!” Linda greets, her voice soft. She’s got a bit of a bounce to her step as the microwave beeps. “How was dinner?”

James has now spotted them, as well. His eyes pop open, no longer half asleep as he starts to struggle against her shoulder. He looks overtired and cranky, his nose still a little snotty and congested as Brendon walks over to snag him from Linda’s arms. Brendon immediately wraps him up in a big hug, resting his own cheek on top of James’ head.

“It was so good,” Sarah groans, leaning over the kitchen island. She looks around for takeout containers, and then asks, “Did you guys end up ordering Chinese?”

Before Linda can answer, Spencer walks into the kitchen, finally broken from his TV spell. He spots Sarah and Brendon, and asks, “Hey, how was dinner?”

“Gooooood,” Brendon answers this time, pressing his mouth against the side of James’ face. He’s bouncing around a little bit, too, because old habits die hard and he’s been doing this since James was a newborn baby and up every three hours through the night.

Linda opens up the microwave, and grabs the bottle she’d been heating up before they walked through the door. She tests it on her wrist and then holds it up for James over Brendon’s shoulder. James grabs it with one hand and brings it to his mouth immediately, settling further into Brendon’s shoulder as he starts to nurse himself to sleep.

“Aww,” Sarah says, pushing herself away from the kitchen island. She walks up behind Brendon and pets James’ head softly, smoothing his dark hair back from his forehead. She wipes a remaining tear off of his cheek with her thumb, and then makes a silly face at him. That cracks his pouty frown and he smiles around the bottle she’s been trying to unsuccessfully wean him from for weeks. “Were you good for Auntie Linda and Uncle Spencer?”

James frowns at her and turns, burying his face in the side of Brendon’s neck.

“I’ll put him to bed,” Brendon smiles, turning around to face everyone else. He rubs his hand over James’ back, and asks, “You guys want to stick around? A little poker, maybe?”

The three of them make agreeable noises, and Spencer says, “Poke her, I hardly knew her,” so Brendon gives them an awkward thumbs up and then heads in the direction of James’ bedroom.

“You’re so tired,” He tells James softly, pushing the door to James’ bedroom open with his free hand.

Inside, the lamp is already on, warm light spilling across half of the room. When Sarah was six months pregnant, she’d gone on a bender about gender neutral everything, and as a direct result the nursery was decorated in everything tan, butter yellow, and brown. It’ll be good if we have another one, she said, not knowing at the time how things would ultimately turn out.

Brendon sits down in the rocking chair, and kicks his feet up onto the matching stool as James settles on his chest.

James falls asleep quickly, face smooshed against Brendon’s chest as they rock back and forth. Brendon sings softly, Frank Sinatra and his favorite Blondie track because he’s feeling a little new wave sitting there in his suit pants and dress shirt. James is asleep halfway through Witchcraft, but Brendon keeps going, mostly for himself.

It’s an indulgence that he doesn’t really have anymore, these quiet moments with his son where they’re the only two people in the world.

He leans his head back against the rocking chair, trying to remember the words to Rapture as he sings them. This is the first moment since the divorce that he’s felt his chest being pulled in three different directions. What he wants, what he needs, what he already has. Somehow Ryan fits into all of that, even now, while Brendon is holding his son after coming back from a dinner with his soon to be ex-wife.

“Hey,” Sarah whispers, appearing in the doorway. She’s changed out of her dinner dress, and into a pair of yoga pants and a tank top. Brendon raises his eyebrows, and reaches over James to set the baby bottle on the side table. “Spencer’s got the chips out if you want to put him down.”

Brendon nods, says softly, “Okay, I’m coming.”

As he climbs out of the rocking chair, he tries not to upset the delicate balance of James’ sleep. 

Usually the toddler slept like a freight train, it was just a side effect of being raised on the road. Bronx had been the same way, Brendon remembers, when they were still opening for Fall Out Boy and Ashlee and Pete had their own bus. The jewel in a crown made out of shit. He’d fall asleep side-stage, head tilted and mouth wide open against Ashlee’s shoulder. James is already doing the same, but nights like these, where he exhausts himself, he would wake up at the drop of a pin.

Brendon bends over the side of the crib as he sets James down, and then smoothes one hand over the back of his head before he goes.

Sarah steps to the side of the doorframe as Brendon comes out of the bedroom, half closing the door behind himself.

“I miss that,” He tells her, surprising himself when he sounds a little choked up.

She frowns quickly, looking sad for him. Those big eyes, Brendon thinks to himself, his own chest feeling sunken and warm.

A mud puddle full of memories and old feelings that neither of them had any business walking through anymore.

“I know,” Sarah tells him after a moment, her voice soft. Mom. When Brendon doesn’t look away from her face, his usually warm eyes sad and dark and wide, she holds her arms out and sighs as he leans into them. She wraps him in a big hug as he buries his face in her shoulder, sad. Sarah pets the back of his head and tries not to get upset herself, as she adds, “It’s not forever.”

Realistically, he knows that, but it means nothing when he feels like this.

“I know,” He says this time, as he pulls back, nodding his head. He wipes a hand over his face as they start back down the hallway, and whispers, “I just miss him.”

They hold hands until they reach the kitchen door, and Sarah gives him one last reassuring squeeze before they part.

~

Everyone gets KO’ed by Spencer in poker.

Brendon is chalking it up to the fact that they’d broken out the rum and cokes at the end of the first round, and by the third Spencer had been the only one left sober enough to maintain a decent poker face. During the final shuffle Linda and Sarah had barely been paying attention, too busy looking up manicures on Pinterest and talking about how damaged their cuticle beds were.

They reheat the leftovers from the Chinese food Linda and Spencer ordered earlier in the night, splitting the box of chow mein between the four of them as they sit around the kitchen table talking. Brendon bet Spencer a blowjob, which he probably cumultively owes at least a dozen of over the years, and Sarah bet him a Dole Whip next time they go to Disneyland.

The two of them stay until almost one in the morning, when they finally throw it in. Linda’s tipsy, cackling into the curve of Spencer’s back as they put their jackets on in the front hall, preparing for the late fall weather that awaits them outside.

“I’ll text you,” Linda says, she and Sarah’s code for goodbye, as she follows Spencer down the walkway path outside.

Brendon and Sarah watch the two of them off, waiting until they’re both in the car with the ignition on before Brendon closes the door.

“You want to have a few more drinks before I go?” Brendon asks, as he throws the lock.

Sarah holds one palm up, and they high five as she replies, “Always.”

~

This is why he loved Sarah. Why he fell in love with Sarah.

It’s dark outside, but there’s so much fog in LA that the sky above them looks purple. They’re sitting together on the back porch, the baby monitor on the table between them as they polish off the rest of the rum and crack into Brendon’s cuban cigars. Someone sent them as a gift when James was first born, Brendon thinks it actually might have been Pete, and Sarah only recently uncovered the box while going through drawers, packing Brendon’s things up.

The thought is both sobering and electrifying.

Sarah is laughing, kind of choking on smoke as she waves one hand in front of her face. She’s sitting in the chair with both legs thrown over the arm, an ancient pair of Uggs practically hanging off of her feet.

“So, Linda wants me to go to this speed dating event,” Sarah tells him, sounding amused. She stares at the lit end of her cigar for a moment before she brings it back to her mouth, talking around her teeth as she adds, “Her cousin is hosting it.”

When Brendon looks back at this time in their lives, he’ll realize this was the first moment in a string of many that would eventually dictate what their life together would become.

But tonight, Brendon just grins, and pours himself another drink. He raises one eyebrow at her, and asks, “Are you going to go?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” She shrugs, looking over at him with a wrinkled nose. She bounces one foot. “I don’t think I’m ready to start dating again. Am I?”

Brendon makes a face at that, and blames it on the alcohol. For some goddamn reason they’re drinking the booze straight, because Sarah says she doesn’t want to waste her last two cans of Diet coke when they’re already drunk. He shakes his head.

“That’s the million dollar question,” He admits, leaning forward to set his glass back down on the patio table.

She’s busy tapping her cigar in the ashtray, one eyebrow quirked at him. She sounds curious as she asks, “What do you mean?

“I don’t know. I guess I was just thinking the same thing the other day,” He admits, settling back in his chair, both hands folded over the flattest part of his stomach. “I feel fine, I think. I’m capable of love, I think I know that. But like… really. Who wants to date some dude who split up with his wife two weeks ago? The ink isn’t even dry on our divorce papers.”

Sarah grins at him, cigar against her teeth, and answers, “Broken people attract broken people. I saw that on Oprah.”

“I never watched Oprah,” Brendon lies. He used to do his homework at the living room table while his mom watched TV. Every afternoon like clockwork, he would magically appear by the time four o’clock rolled around, ready to get down to his Spanish verbs and not so advanced algebra.

It’s not lost on Sarah. She catches him, a smirk on her face as she adds, “That’s debatable.”

Brendon laughs at that, shrugging as they nurse their drinks and fall into a comfortable silence.

He’s not entirely sure he does what he does next. The good part of him wants to make sure that Sarah knows what’s going on, before anyone else finds out and has a chance to tell her. The bad part of him wants to keep it a secret forever; the dark, dirty parts, they still exist somewhere inside. The pieces of him that are still directly linked to tour bus beds, Ryan, and the dark.

All of the remaining pieces are just drunk and stupid. They float around freely inside of him, and that’s why it seems like such a good idea to just blurt it out, despite the fact there’s a good chance it will ruin what had otherwise been a fun night.

“I’m seeing Ryan again,” He admits. As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he cuts himself off.

All of a sudden his heart is pounding so wildly that he can hear it beat in his ears. This is it, it’s out there. Once it’s floating around in the abyss, you can’t just take it back and pretend that nothing ever happened. Those were the rules. Despite that, it still takes him a moment to summon the courage to lift his gaze. When he finally does, all he sees is Sarah.

She’s frozen, eyes wide like a deer caught in headlights. Her hands are like claws around her glass.

“Ryan?” She asks, suddenly kicking back into motion. The word sounds foreign coming out of her mouth. She says his name like she’s chewing on broken glass.

Brendon nods, and pre-emptively reaches into his pants pocket for his cigarettes. He has to lift his hips up off of the chair to get to them.

“We went out for a drink the other night,” He admits, his voice quiet. 

As he pauses to light his cigarette, he decides not to tell her about breakfast this morning. It’s pretty clear that she isn’t exactly sure how to process the news at first. It’s an admission between them, the closest either of them have ever truly come to cheating, because that’s just where Ryan lived. In a list of relationship foibles, Ryan had always been alongside fucking around with a stranger, and lying about money.

“Did you, are you…” She’s trying to recover, but she’s spinning out.

Brendon’s stomach dips into his knees as he realizes what she’s trying to ask. He shakes his head quickly, and ashes his cigarette all over his lap.

“No - we aren’t - we aren’t. It’s not romantic,” He clarifies, finally, kicking himself for being so vague with his initial wording. “We’re just talking.”

Sarah nods, chewing on her bottom lip as she studies his face carefully. Brendon doesn’t know what she’s looking for there, but after a moment of consideration, she finds it and says, voice carefully neutral, “He ruined you, Brendon.”

“I know,” He nods. He was there. He remembers it well. This will be a part of every conversation he has that includes Ryan from his moment on: the part where he has to sell Ryan, to explain why Brendon is letting him back in after so much bad blood. Rivers practically flowed with it, and Brendon can’t figure out the right words, the right explanation. Ryan never left, not fully. He never got out from under Brendon’s skin, he’d be there forever, just like piano keys and summer flowers. Brendon is hardly letting him _back in._ “I need you to trust me on this.”

She considers that for a moment, rubbing her temple. The cigars are forgotten, she reaches for her drink and practically throws the rest back.

“Does anyone else know?” She asks, glancing back over at him. She looks spooked, completely aware of why Brendon is doing what he’s doing. She had been the one to fix his broken heart. She knew the parts of him that Ryan snapped in half and set on fire. Before he can answer her, she adds, “Is he still a drug addict?”

It’s a direct question, poorly worded but hardly rude considering the circumstances.

“No. And no,” Brendon answers, shaking his head. He takes a drag of his cigarette, and exhales through his nose as he fiddles with the edge of the pack, the surgeon general’s warning. “The addiction doesn’t go away, but he’s in recovery. He’s completing the twelve steps, and he’s been clean for six months.”

She frowns at that. Brendon’s told her the abridged version of the aggregate Ross penchant for addiction. It started with Ryan’s father in a Vegas hospital room, bloated and sick from the booze, and the last Brendon had heard of it, it ended with his step sister addicted to narcotics and on the mend in a Malibu rehab facility. It truly ran in his blood.

Sometimes, when Brendon took his own feelings out of the equation, he understood how Ryan had come to be so broken.

“I don’t trust him,” Sarah admits after a long moment. She reaches for her cigar again, as time seems to tick once more, and adds, “But I do trust you. Just please, promise me that you won’t let this cloud your judgement. It’s not just you, now. Whatever you do will affect all of us.”

That idea sobers him up. He presses his lips together, thumb scratching at the corner of his mouth as he stares at the ground.

“I know it doesn’t make sense,” He finally says, trying to piece the words together. He doesn’t look up from the ground, because for some reason, it’s easier this way, to keep the words where he can see them. “But after everything, Ryan is still… he’s up there. There’s James, there’s you, and there’s Ryan. I can’t explain it, but it’s… it’s bone deep. I can’t change that part of me. I can’t. It’s the clock that makes me tick.”

She frowns at him again, looking sad in the eyes.

“I know,” She admits after a moment, watching him carefully. “That’s the part that scares me.”


	9. i got soul

Brendon is wading through another online article about recovery and addiction when his realtor calls to tell him he got the house.

“Fuck,” He swears, almost knocking his coffee mug over. Pete looks over at him curiously, one eyebrow raised underneath the brim of his hat. Brendon fumbles again, closing the lid of his laptop and switching his phone to the other ear as he gets up from the kitchen table. “That’s great news. That’s great.”

He wanders around the kitchen aimlessly as the realtor goes over what to expect next - the list begins and ends with ‘paperwork.’

By the end of the call he’s got a to-do list about twenty five items long, and Pete is still staring over at him with a weird look on his face as he hangs up.

“Fuck. I just bought a house,” Brendon blurts out, mouth dropping open before he Breakfast Clubs his fist up into the air. He drops his voice to a deep baritone, and adds, “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t yooou, forget about me…”

Pete is cackling with laughter, clapping as he leans back in his chair and watches Brendon punch the air a few more times. Brendon is one beer away from breaking into a classic MJ move when his phone rings again and he starts laughing, brushing the hair off of his forehead with one hand as he flips his phone over in the other to look at the screen. 

Ryan.

Still grinning, Brendon sobers up a fraction, mutes the call notification, and shakes his head a little as he makes his way back to the kitchen table.

“Congrats, man,” Pete lauds him, pulling the hat from his head by its brim. He runs one hand over his hair, fingers scratching at the crown of his skull, before he sets it back on and adjusts the rim. “When do you get possession?”

Brendon runs a nervous hand through his hair, trying to keep it from flopping against his forehead, and answers, “Not for another month. That’s nothing, though.”

“It’ll go fast,” Pete agrees, still smiling at him as he slides his headphones back over his hat. As an afterthought, he adds another, “Congrats.”

Nodding, Brendon offers a tight lipped smile back, and drums his fingers against the table top.

Fireworks are exploding in Brendon’s chest. The missed call notification from Ryan pops back up on his phone screen, like its unfazed by the good news.

~

Brendon didn’t realize it at the time, but when he was young, his greatest fear was losing Ryan.

What a miserable thing to be afraid of, losing someone. And what a cruel joke for the universe to play on him in return. Ryan was a person, a man who could think and walk and change his mind at the drop of a dime, because that’s what humans did. Brendon couldn’t understand it when he’d been in the thick of it, but he never had any right ever being so desperate. To pile those bricks on Ryan’s shoulders, to string himself through Ryan’s belt loops and grip at his hair so very tightly.

It had been a slow, sad mudslide. The actual act of loss happened in three parts, so incremental that Brendon hadn’t even realized Ryan was gone until he’d already walked out the door. Their last show together had been practically cut and paste, for how normal it had been. It broke Brendon’s heart, afterwards, to wonder how long Ryan had successfully been wearing that mask for.

Brendon still remembers the first conversation they had with one another, after Ryan walked out. Ryan had been back on a bus to the airport, an overnight flight from Cape Town to New York with a secret redeye ticket that had been booked weeks prior.

“I’m going to miss you,” Is all that Brendon had been capable of saying.

It was like his brain was stuck on a loop, and he wasn’t strong enough to pick up the turntable arm. He still remembers what that felt like, to live in that moment where he realized Ryan was not coming back. Hopeless.

“I know,” Was all Ryan said back to him. His voice had been low, stagnant, disinterested like Brendon was telling him yesterday’s weather forecast or reciting the first half of the alphabet for lack of anything better to say. For Ryan, it was old news, a decision made a long time ago.

For Brendon, it had been the last broken stitch in a long line of tearing himself open for Ryan’s benefit.

“Call me when you get back, okay?” Brendon managed to get out, not knowing what else to say, and too sore inside to put his own share of the nails in the coffin of their relationship. He remembers standing in their South African hotel room, the neck of a half empty beer bottle held loosely in the fingers of one hand. Across the otherwise empty room, Zack had been watching him carefully. Almost studious, with his arms crossed over his chest, and both feet up on the expensive looking coffee table. “Just, you know. I want to make sure you get back safe.”

Ryan hadn’t given him the pleasure of a thank you, or even a goodbye. Instead, the line went dead, like the whole thing was simply something Ryan no longer had the patience or understanding to deal with.

It had been a shock to the system, and a moment later, Brendon had violently thrown the phone across the room. The device smashed into the wall screen first, and exploded into what seemed like a thousand small pieces before falling to the floor.

“Roses don’t like being told what to do,” Brendon used to say, with a self indulgent smile on his face as he’d look over at Ryan happily.

He’d been right, of course. And he’d proven it to himself as he’d kneeled on the hotel room floor, crying and clutching his beer bottle like it might save him.

~

Once the new house is official, Brendon confirms the divorce on Twitter.

The last thing he wants is for the house sale papers to leak before he has a chance to clarify what’s going on, so he posts a short message that’s clear, simple, and to the point.

_Sarah and I are getting divorced. We still love each other very much. We appreciate your understanding and our privacy, xo, Bden._

It’s all very detached, almost clinical. It doesn’t hurt as much as he thinks it should, and when he texts Sarah to say so, it’s a comfort to find out that she feels the same way. _It’s not about love,_ she tells him, wisdom practically oozing through her text. _It’s about who we are. We aren’t those people anymore, and I don’t know about you, but I’m relieved to finally take that costume off._

~

“Hey,” Brendon grins. It’s dark outside, already an hour past dusk. “Sorry I missed your call earlier, busy day.”

As he sets a cigarette between his dry lips and flicks his lighter, he hears Ryan exhale softly on the other end of the line.

“No worries,” Ryan tells him, easily. He sounds tired, his voice worn out. For one split second, Brendon aches to feel Ryan’s throat underneath his fingertips, warm skin and the vibration with every word Ryan speaks. “I was gonna ask you if you wanted to hang out tonight.”

Brendon makes an agreeable noise in the back of his throat as he takes a seat in one of the metal patio chairs.

“I would have,” He says, because it means something, to admit that. “I should have called you back earlier.”

A soft laugh, and then a shuffle, like Ryan is switching his phone from one ear to the other. He says, “Well, now’s a good time for me. How about you?”

“What?” Brendon laughs, ashing his cigarette in the ashtray Patrick was very diligent about providing him. “Now?”

Ryan’s voice is soft, like syrup dripping down Brendon’s spine. He answers, “Yeah. Do you turn into dust after sunset or something?”

“No, not yet,” Brendon replies. Without realizing it, he’s lowered the tone of his own voice to match Ryan’s. He feels young again, a nostalgic bubble of youth expanding in his stomach. He remembers quiet, hushed conversations in the back of tour buses, venue hallways, caught in the heavy black curtains that hung backstage. “I’ve been known to wake up as a werewolf, though. For some reason I always lose my clothes.”

That makes Ryan laugh, genuine and caught off-guard. After a second, he says, “I’m putting on my jacket. I’ll pick you up.”

“I can meet you somewhere,” Brendon interjects, glancing in the direction of the French doors that lead into the living room. On the other side of the glass panels, Pete and Patrick are watching a movie on the couch. “Where were you thinking?”

He takes one last drag of his cigarette before butting it out in the ash tray.

“Santa Monica Pier,” Ryan answers, the sound of a car alarm disarming in the background.

This is kicking the line from the sand, throwing down his hand of cards, and completely giving in.

“Sure,” Brendon nods, already getting up from his chair. “I’ll meet you there in an hour.”


	10. werewolves in santa monica

Piers have always kind of been their thing, Brendon thinks, as he pulls into an empty parking spot.

It had all started in Venice Beach; an oceanic runway into water, built with salt soaked wood and rusty bolts. At the time they had just been two latch key kids from the Las Vegas desert, land of dust and neon lights. It had been a novelty to walk along the water and feel it lap at their ankles.

Brendon would stand at that pier often, even throughout his marriage to Sarah. He’d stand there whenever he needed to remember what it felt like to have the ocean spray hit his face. The smell of the sea often reminded him of what it felt like to be loved unconditionally, to hide among the shadows and feel everything in plain sight.

He and Ryan used to spend a lot of time together in Venice Beach, back during the recording of the first album. They’d crack jokes at Brent’s expense and bump against one another as they walked down the surf with their pant legs rolled up past their ankles. That had been when Pete was still ‘Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy’, and not just a weird friend with super white teeth, a kid, husband, ex-wife, and string of ex-girlfriends. It was the Pete that no longer existed anymore, the shadow Mario version who lived fast on pain pills and stupid pranks.

They had all been kids, practically babies then. Brendon had just graduated high school that Spring, and Ryan had been fresh out the semester before.

It hadn’t been love - but it had been important, the foundation that you lay down before you press your hands into the cement forever.

Years later, miles away from California, they’d kissed underneath a pier in Myrtle Beach. It was a kiss that inevitably changed the track of Brendon’s life forever, successfully altering the planned course of any decision he would make in the days and weeks and months following. That night, under the pier, they’d held hands and laughed as the waves knocked them over like bowling pins. He still remembers what it felt like when Ryan first pushed him against one of the tower legs and held Brendon’s face in his hands, thumbs against Brendon’s wet cheeks.

They’d stared at one another, breathing hard, eyes dark, practically glimmering black underneath the night sky. Ryan’s hair had been soaked, plastered flat to his forehead and twisted in pyramids against his temples. Brendon would have agreed to anything Ryan asked him that night. All elements of pride had been removed from the table, and that was the moment, the split second, where they became equals. 

For a long time afterwards, Brendon kicked himself for ever feeling like that. Once Ryan was no longer around he wondered if he made the wrong decision, trusting Ryan the way he had.

But time changed everything, and his relationship with Ryan was not exempt from that rule.

~

He finds Ryan standing underneath the ‘Santa Monica Yacht Harbor’ sign on Ocean Avenue.

“Hey,” Ryan smiles at him, pushing away from the wooden column he’d been leaning against. He’s wearing a leather jacket with a black and white striped shirt underneath. 

It’s practically pavlovian the way that Brendon wants to feel the fabric between his fingertips.

“I like the whole ‘meeting underneath the cover of darkness’ thing,” Brendon grins, as they come to stand toe to toe. “It makes me feel very mysterious.”

Laughing, Ryan nods his head in the direction of the midway. As they start towards it together, he says, “Well, I wouldn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.”

“What do you mean?” Brendon asks curiously, tucking his hands in his pockets.

Ryan shrugs and steps off of the curb, walking in the street gutter as they continue to make their way towards the main strip of the pier.

“Just - you know,” He says after a minute, awkwardly glancing over at Brendon. Beside them, the ocean rolls against the surf. “The whole thing feels very clandestine. Me and you.”

Smiling, Brendon makes a soft sound of agreement in the back of his throat. Ryan isn’t wrong, and he finds himself shrugging as he replies, “I like this. I like what we’re doing.”

“Me too,” Ryan agrees, glancing over at him again. Brendon catches his eye and smiles.

It’s sick, the things that cell memory can do. In the darkness with the stars above him, he is at the receiving end of a series of flash bang memories, and every single one begins and ends with Ryan. It’s a series of punches to the stomach: sitting in the dark bus lounge at two a.m., sharing a cigarette on a friend’s front porch long after everyone else has gone to bed, holding hands and kissing in the dead of the night.

“So what I’m hearing is that you’ll finally go on the ferris wheel with me,” Brendon grins, cutting off his own memories as he walks closer to the edge of the curb. He bumps into Ryan’s shoulder, and laughs at the scandalized face Ryan makes at his suggestion.

Little known fact about Ryan Ross: ferris wheels are a known enemy, and not to be trusted.

“That… I’m not promising anything,” Ryan finally manages to say, trying to be diplomatic. If there was ever a window of opportunity in Brendon’s life for finally convincing Ryan to set foot on a ferris wheel, the time is now. He can’t stop laughing as they pass through the gates to the midway, and Ryan adds, “I need to mentally prepare for that. I need a corn dog.”

Brendon is still fighting back a smile as Ryan heads to the first vendor. He watches as Ryan stands in line behind another couple. Ryan digs through his pockets looking for a few dollar bills and then stands there, staring at the menu like he doesn’t already know what he wants.

“That corn dog is definitely going to make a surprise guest appearance on your shoes later,” Brendon grins, as Ryan comes back with a corn dog in each hand. He holds one of the two out for Brendon, an eyebrow raised, and laughs when Brendon adds, “Or maybe my shoes. Thanks.”

He hasn’t had a corn dog in approximately one thousand years. He’s levelling half of it into his mouth when Ryan admits, mouth full, “I couldn’t remember if you like ketchup.”

“All mustard all the time,” Brendon confirms, chewing. “Fuck that’s good.”

Ryan nods, silently agreeing, and stares at the spot he’s going to bite next while he chews the food currently in his mouth. They stand there and eat their corn dogs for a few minutes, unwilling to wander any further and sacrifice the primo location they have near the trash cans. Once they’re both down to the stick they throw their garbage away and wipe their hands off on their pants, and then resume walking down the midway.

“I’m thinking… basketball,” Brendon announces, rubbing the palms of his hands together. He nods a little further up the midway, to where there’s a red, white and blue basketball hoop stall. Three throws for five bucks. Brendon practically feels the stuffed Looney Tunes characters calling his name from here as he adds, “If I win, we go on the ferris wheel.”

Laughing, Ryan follows along beside him. He looks intrigued as he asks, “And if you lose?”

“We can go leather jacket shopping or something, I don’t know,” Brendon grins, smile widening when Ryan realizes the joke is at his expense. Ryan tries to frown, grimacing through his laugh, but then he just ends up breaking and covering his face with both hands instead. He’s still groaning when he and Brendon walk up to the basketball counter. Brendon throws down a five dollar bill and announces, “I got those Lincolns.”

The carny gives him a wry look, but tosses him a miniature basketball anyways.

Brendon immediately misses his first shot, much to Ryan’s delight. He chalks it up to a warm up round, and then prepares for his second shot as the carny stands behind the counter, looking bored and staring out at the thinning midnight crowd. Ryan’s at his elbow, which is distracting by itself, and ultimately what Brendon blames the loss of his second shot on.

“Fuck! I’m out of practice!” Brendon exclaims, trying to defend himself when Ryan starts laughing.

He takes his time on his third and final throw, taking care to line it up perfectly before he takes the shot. It’s all in the wrist, he thinks to himself, remembering weekend games in Pete’s driveway with Bronx. They both watch as the miniature basketball arcs through the air. For one split second Brendon is convinced he’s resigned to a rim shot, but then the basketball bounces up, hits the backboard, and drops right through the net.

“ _FUCK_ yeah,” Brendon shouts, excitement getting the best of him as he bounces back from the counter and pumps one arm up into the air. Ryan looks a particular combination of horrified and disappointed as Brendon gets in his face and adds, “Swish, motherfucker.”

A few people walking by look over at them, likely expecting to see a fat cheque or some kind of fistfight to match the level of Brendon’s reaction.

“I thought these games were fixed,” Ryan complains, as he watches the carny hand over a stuffed animal from the back board. It’s just a cheap teddy bear, because Brendon didn’t spend nearly enough money to earn one of the licensed characters, but it might as well be a crisp hundy for the way he’s reacting. He cackles and hands the bear over to Ryan, not at all thrown when Ryan blurts, “I don’t want that.”

Brendon hands it over anyways, telling him, “You can hug it when we get to the top of the ferris wheel.”

“Fuck,” Ryan sighs. But he accepts the teddy bear.

~

Brendon is cackling.

He can’t help himself. It’s not that he enjoys seeing other people in pain, or in misery, but he does love watching videos of guys taking softballs to the nuts, and this is the real life equivalent of that. Ryan stands beside him, eyes wide, staring up at the ferris wheel they’ve been patiently waiting to ride. He’s fidgeting, bouncing one foot against the ground and tapping his fingers against the metal gate.

“Face your fears, right?” Brendon asks, smiling widely as the gate swings open and a carny motions them through. Brendon hands both of their tickets over, waiting patiently as the carny rips them and hands the stubs back. Brendon tucks them in his pocket carefully, and then nods towards the platform.

Ryan follows along behind him, not sounding happy about it as he replies, “I’m comfortable with it, actually. I’m afraid of clowns, too, and you don’t see me trying to get a date with It.”

“After you,” Brendon smiles, holding the bar up on the ferris wheel seat. Ryan looks at him sourly and then steps up onto the platform, taking a short, deep breath before he ducks under the bar and sits down in the seat.

His face goes sheet white the second the seat tips back a fraction of an inch.

“I promise I won’t rock the boat,” Brendon lies, as he climbs into the seat as well.

It’s - it’s a tight fit, actually. The seat wasn’t really made to accommodate two grown men, Brendon thinks to himself, as they click the bar down over their laps, thighs pressed tightly together. It’s really more suitable for a straight couple, or two kids. Brendon exhales, and feels something sizzle in the pit of his stomach; the chemistry of his body finally getting what it wants, being this close to Ryan.

“I’m just gonna - ” Brendon starts to say, awkwardly lifting his arm over Ryan’s head. It’s too cramped with them shoulder to shoulder, so he rests his arm along the back of the seat instead, fingers hanging off the edge of the metal. Ryan jams the teddy bear between his leg and the other side of the seat, already looking a little green in the gills as the ride clunks and the carny starts to rotate the wheel so the next empty seat is on the bottom.

Ryan exhales a deep breath, relaxing a bit as they come to a stop again. He’s still white knuckling the safety bar, but he doesn’t sound as strained as he glances over at Brendon and says, “This view is killer.”

“Yeah, it’s beautiful,” Brendon agrees, easily.

The water is stretched out in front of them, gorgeous and deep blue. All of the lights from the midway reflect on the mirrored surface, and there are a few night surfers slightly down the shore. Nostalgia drips through him, the smell of the sea and the sound of the water hitting the sand. These are all parts of his character that are distinct, and make up the person who he has grown to be. The ocean, and at the center of it all, Ryan.

“What the fuck,” Ryan blurts suddenly, practically elbowing Brendon in the side as the ride jerks and finally begins to move.

Brendon laughs, watching Ryan’s profile as the ferris wheel turns. Ryan goes through all seven stages of grief in about ten seconds flat: shock, denial, pain, guilt, anger, reconstruction, and finally, acceptance. It’s a grim acceptance, but acceptance none the less, and Ryan gives in, closing his eyes as they come back around. The bottom of their seat scrapes against the ride’s platform before they lurch forward, launching back into the sky again.

“Open your eyes,” Brendon says, leaning into Ryan’s side as their seat reaches the top of the wheel. “You’re missing the best part.”

Swallowing tightly, Ryan grimaces and bites out, “I don’t care. Not seeing anything is the best part.”

“Hold my hand,” Brendon laughs, reaching for one of Ryan’s hands. He has to pry Ryan’s fingers off of the safety bar, but Ryan eventually relents, fingers cold and fisted against his palm as Brendon wrangles one hand over into his lap. He wraps both of his hands around one of Ryan’s, and grins. “Ryan, open your eyes.”

Ryan frowns again, eyes still closed, before he seems to feel the way Brendon is intently staring at him. He cracks one eye half open, looking over to see what Brendon is doing more than anything else, before he smiles despite himself and then opens his eyes properly. He still doesn’t look happy about it, though.

“Fuck this fucking ferris wheel,” He sighs, but he doesn’t move his hand from between Brendon’s.

~

Once they’re back on the ground, Ryan’s got sea legs.

Brendon buys them both snow cones - rainbow for himself, and cherry for Ryan - and then they head away from the bustle of the midway, taking the wooden steps that lead down to the sand two at a time instead.

“There’s a pretty good spot down here,” Brendon says, sidestepping a rock as he tilts his head back and catches some of the syrup dripping from the bottom of the paper cone with his mouth. Over one shoulder, he adds, “Hey, thanks for going on the ferris wheel with me.”

Behind him, Ryan makes a noncommittal noise and bites a mouthful of ice from the top of his cone.

“You won fair and square,” He adds after a moment, following Brendon down the sand.

The midway spins on above them, the sound of games ringing and rides spinning punctuating their movements. Brendon sees a pretty good spot a little bit further down the sand. It’s tucked away from everything above them, but it’s not too close to the beach fire he can see happening even further down the shore. He has an ancient Weezer song stuck in his head as he eats his snow cone and steps over another beach log.

A few minutes later they reach the spot Brendon’s been eyeballing, Ryan trailing a few yards behind.

“Prime location,” Brendon announces, as he lowers himself down onto the sand and pats the spot on the ground beside him.

Ryan sits down too, digging his heels into the sand as he gets comfortable. They finish their snow cones off in silence.

“Piers have always kinda been our thing, huh?” Ryan asks a few minutes later, looking down at his hands intently.

It surprises Brendon, the honesty he hears laced in Ryan’s tone - like he’s been thinking it all along, too.

“Yeah,” Brendon answers. It’s funny, his own voice sounds rougher than he thought it would. He looks over at Ryan and adds, “They kind of are.”

Ryan frowns suddenly, staring ahead at the water. He admits, “I really missed you. I missed the way I feel when I’m around you, and I’m scared I’m going to lose that again.”

“I know,” Brendon whispers. He chews on his bottom lip, studying Ryan’s profile in the moonlight. Everything changes, and sometimes things fall apart - he knows that, he is a walking example of how something that should fit together could still crumble into pieces. But when Ryan is involved, the part of his brain that operates on virtue doesn’t seem to care.

He realized a long time ago that he would light the world on fire if it meant he could keep Ryan close.

“The ferris wheel made you smile,” Ryan admits, though his voice gives nothing away. “That’s why I did it.”

Brendon jumps in surprise when there’s a loud pop just a little further down the beach. They both look up at the sky as a firework claps in the air, sharp and bright and gold in the dark night. Down the shore, the people around the beach fire set off another. It howls up into the sky, crackling into a million pieces once it looks like it’s as high as the stars.

He swallows, licking his lips as he stares up at the sky. The last year of their relationship had been like being aboard the Titanic, knowing that the ship was about to sink. He could still see it in every photograph, and hear it in every song. ‘The shared madness of two,’ Pete used to say, like he knew something that nobody else did yet, as he’d rail oxycontin and sit in his living room in the dark. 

Pete had been the fucking iceberg personified, the beginning of the end. He’d been the first rock to shift that caused the mudslide, and everyone had gone down with him.

Living through that time, being on that sinking ship, it had eaten Brendon alive. He could still picture himself. Everyone around him was either sinking or swimming, but Brendon was just trapped on the ship. He pictured himself in the grand dining room, practically cavernous in its size. He’d been surrounded by opulence, but he hadn’t been able to see any of it because he’d been too busy hiding underneath one of the dining tables with his hands over his head and his forehead pressed against the ground, jerking against the parquet floor whenever another chandelier popped.

Ryan had been the one throwing dishes against the wall, happy to help the severe angle of the sinking boat along with a wide grin on his face. He and Pete would go on benders together, just the two of them - Peter Pan and John. They would disappear for entire weekends, but the only evidence of their time together would be the empty prescription bottles and half built blanket forts left behind.

Loving Ryan had been everything: a sinking ship, a mudslide, a boat caught in the storm. As Brendon grew up, he realized that storms always have an eye, and now, he knows that Sarah had been his. It’s not hard to see that there’s another wall of raging weather right around the corner. Ryan brings rain and snow and the hottest bouts of sun that Brendon has ever felt. That’s why he will always buy a ticket, even knowing what he knows now. He will always be prepared to set sail and travel the moment that Ryan breezes back into his life.

Tonight, on the beach, another firework cracks in the dark night sky above them.

“I can’t watch you leave again,” Brendon whispers. His voice is suddenly caught in the back of his throat as they watch one another, their expressions guarded and careful.

They study one another from their respective side in the sand, and further down the beach, someone shrieks before there’s the sound of feet plunging into water. Laughter, splashing. Skinnydipping.

“I don’t want to go anymore,” Ryan answers, his own voice soft. He frowns at Brendon, face betraying him as his insecurity flashes across it like a bright neon sign.

Brendon smiles at that, unable to stop himself. He feels it stretch across his face, slow and sure. He says, “Okay.”

“Okay,” Ryan repeats, echoing Brendon like he needs to see how the word feels in his own mouth. Once it’s out there, he physically relaxes, watching carefully as Brendon shifts up onto his knees, hair falling over his forehead as he reaches for Ryan. Ryan lets Brendon slide both hands under the shoulders of his leather jacket, fingers feeling the fabric of his t-shirt. Brendon’s thumbs trace Ryan’s collarbones, and then he trails both hands up, until he can wrap his fingers around Ryan’s jaw. Ryan laughs suddenly, and says it again, “Okay.”

A smile still on his face, Brendon leans forward. His knees sink into the sand as he presses their mouths together.

It is everything. It is suddenly rear ending a car on the highway, buying a brand new house, and sitting at the top of a ferris wheel all in one. Brendon’s body ignites and he is on fire, unable to stop himself from burning up as he makes a noise in the back of his throat and pulls Ryan closer.

As he does, another firework explodes in the sky above them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would really appreciate any comments or feedback on this one :) 
> 
> Story developmeeeeent.


	11. true blue

It’s funny, looking back.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Brendon has realized that there are some things you aren’t meant to get away from; there are some people that were created just for you, because of you, to live soul to soul with you. Brendon could have been in any car, on any street, in any city, and one day, eventually, he would have collided with Ryan.

Brendon rolls back against the sand, groaning as he feels Ryan crawl on top of him. Ryan has a knee on either side of Brendon’s hips, one hand twisted in the fabric at the front of Brendon’s shirt, and the other knotted in the hair at the crown of his head. Brendon kisses back deeply, eyes closed, hips rolling as he runs his fingers over Ryan’s sides and slides his palms along the curve of Ryan’s rib cage. Ryan is different than he remembers: thicker, more muscular.

The last time Brendon had sex with Ryan, Ryan was addicted to cocaine and 125 pounds soaking wet.

Another firework explodes in the sky, Brendon barely catches a glimpse of it behind the crown of Ryan’s head. The loud snap-bang startles them away from one another, and Ryan pauses, breathing heavy as he looks back over his shoulder. Above them, another firework sizzles up into the dark blue clouds and explodes, silver and gold.

Brendon laughs, tilting his head back in the sand to watch the line of sparks that fizzle and pop over their heads. He can’t help the wide, vulnerable grin that spreads over his face as Ryan turns back to look down at him. Ryan’s eyes are bright, crystal clear. It makes Brendon ache inside.

They watch one another for a long, hazy moment, still breathing hard, lips rough and red from kissing. Ryan tightens his fingers in Brendon’s hair and smiles before he leans back in, pressing his mouth against Brendon’s lips, the corner of his mouth, his chin. Brendon touches Ryan as much as he can, his face tilted up to the sky as he rolls his head to the side so Ryan can kiss his neck.

Tonight, it feels like not even the sky is the limit. They lay there in the sand for a long time, Ryan stretched carelessly over Brendon’s body, until the cops arrive to kick out the teenagers who are still lighting fireworks in the sand at the end of the pier.

~

Brendon spends the drive back into Coldwater Canyon singing at the top of his lungs, adjusting the lingering half boner in his pants, and drumming both hands against the steering wheel.

He promised himself he wouldn’t get weird about it, but now he’s sitting in the dark all alone and _he can’t stop getting weird about it._

All he can think about is how different Ryan felt, and how much older his face looked up close. It was still the same face, the same familiar slope of his nose and rise of his cheekbones, but things had changed, too. Ryan’s baby fat had officially been left behind, along with his love of paisley button downs and huge brass belt buckles. 

The only thing Brendon fully recognized - and could still identify in a police line up if asked to - were Ryan’s eyes. They were still the same, apathetic and dark and deep, deep brown. It was almost comforting to know that they still had the ability to peer directly into Brendon’s soul, like Ryan was a window shopper the week before Christmas and Brendon’s insides were the department store. Fuck. He’s totally getting weird. He officially can’t stop himself.

As he pulls back into Pete and Patrick’s driveway, the digital clock underneath the dashboard flashes 3:23 AM.

“Fuck,” He sighs to himself, laughing a little bit under his breath as he shakes his head and turns the ignition off.

It’s strange, but it’s nights like these that he misses his piano the most. The nervous energy rolling through his hands needs to be wrangled, channeled into something or someone. He knows that the keys are the best place to rest his anxious palms.

His piano has always been his center of gravity, the one thing that he has always come back to - after Audrey, Ryan, Shane and Sarah.

If only his ear for the piano translated to his romantic life, he muses, as he catches his own eye in the rear view mirror. He can’t help but smile a little vacantly at himself, his reflection. Brendon sees the way that his eyes are still blown wide, and his mouth is red and rough and used.

The whole thing almost seems ridiculous. Here he is, sitting in the same car that he and Sarah brought James home from the hospital in. The same car that he was driving when he smashed into Ryan’s bumper a week and a half ago. He can hardly connect the two events in his brain, and for one second, cannot feasibly think of how he managed to get from there to here. He sits quietly, staring at the steering wheel until he can’t take it anymore, and then he starts to laugh hysterically instead.

He tries to keep it in at first, choking on the sound of laughter bubbling up from his chest, but then he lets it go. He lets go of all of the resentment and memories and moments that he has kept in his chest for what feels like forever. He laughs loudly, until his head is pounding with pressure, and there are tears in the corners of his eyes.

When his laughter ebbs, he takes a deep breath, lips still trembling in a smile. Even though his mouth is still twitching, daring him to laugh again, he closes his eyes and sets his hands against the steering wheel like he’s resting them on top of piano keys.

He keeps his eyes closed for a long time, thinking about James, thinking about Ryan, until his soul is calm inside. And then his phone vibrates against the leather passenger seat beside him.

It’s a text from Pete, which, at 3:45 in the morning, isn’t that strange. Brendon frowns and slides his thumb across the screen.

 _how long are u gonna sit in the driveway for? ur getting weirder_ , followed by the princess and frog emojis.

Brendon laughs at that, sucking his bottom lip into his mouth as he leans forward to look over the steering wheel. Sure enough there’s still a light on in the living room, punctuated by the blue flash of a television screen flipping between a tv show and commercial. Brendon’s bottom lip slides out from behind his top teeth as he sighs, grabs his keys from the ignition, swings the door open, and gets out.

~

Sure enough, Pete is sitting on the couch with his laptop on the coffee table in front of him and an iPad balanced on his thigh.

“Hey,” Brendon greets, voice quiet. He looks over at the TV - a Kardashian marathon on E! - and then back at Pete. “What’s up?”

Pete frowns and slides an earbud out of his ear before he replies, “Working. I’m trying to get some like… writing stuff done.”

In reality, even Brendon can see that Pete’s just on tumblr. The top half of Patrick’s head is at the bottom of the screen, and there’s a photo of a model covered in jelly beans and ketchup above him. Aesthetic.

“Mmm,” Brendon replies. He dumps his car keys on the coffee table, and then drops himself into the overstuffed leather arm chair beside Pete’s makeshift couch desk. Up close Pete looks half asleep. His eyes are red and bloodshot at the edges, and his forehead is wrinkled in concentration. Strangely enough, this is the version of Pete that usually gets the most work done. That small window of opportunity Pete gets between procrastinating, and being too exhausted to do anything at all. “I’m glad I didn’t wake you up.”

Pete shakes his head, laughing a little as he stretches forward to slide his iPad onto the coffee table beside his laptop. The screen is already dimmed, but even from here it’s pretty obvious Pete’s background is a photograph of Patrick and Bronx smiling for the camera. It’s a familiar picture, though Brendon can’t remember if the last place he saw it was in the front hall or on Pete’s Instagram.

“Dude, c’mon. You know me,” Pete smiles easily, settling back into the couch with his coffee. On the TV, Kylie and Kendall get into a fight. Pete holds his fist out wrist up, and flexes his fingers. “Vampire blood.”

Laughing, Brendon raises his eyebrows and admits, “I don’t doubt it, man.”

“You just missed Patrick, actually,” Pete sighs, before he cuts himself off with a yawn and stretches one arm up into the air over his head. His yawn is contagious, and makes Brendon yawn too. Pete groans at the satisfying stretch, and drops his arm along the back of the couch as he watches Brendon’s yawn. He admits, “We’re trying to get some stuff out, but it’s like… impossible, because we just keep agreeing on everything.”

Brendon smiles, a crooked one that starts at one corner of his mouth before slowly stretching to the other.

“My sweet summer child,” Brendon teases, before he reconsiders and adds, “You guys need to fuck like you hate each other. Problem solved.”

That surprises a laugh out of Pete. He throws his arms up into the air, tips his head against the back of the couch, and sighs, “Yes.”

“Drive it like you stole it,” Brendon elaborates, still a little punch drunk from the beach. “And fuck it like you bought it.”

Pete dissolves into childish laughter at that - it clearly appeals to the teenaged boy side of his brain - before he replies, “I don’t even want to know, man.”

“You probably don’t,” Brendon grins, running his hands back and forth over the arm of the chair. He and Sarah were with Pete and Patrick the day they went out shopping for this particular living room set, because around the same time they’d been in the market for nursery furniture. The entire trip had consisted of Pete and Patrick arguing, Sarah trying to mediate while heavily pregnant, and Patrick eventually getting his way. It was a really good day. He wonders what the inevitable shopping trip for his own new furniture will look like.

It’s kind of a scary thought. The last time he bought furniture by himself, he was 20 and in search of a kitchen table that would also make an appropriate beer pong surface. He thinks he ate a meal on the table a grand total of one time, and it was takeout. Ryan fucked him against it more than it was ever used for its intended purpose.

“Where were you, anyway?” Pete asks, finally removing the earbuds from his head completely, and setting them down beside his laptop.

Brendon shrugs, nervously scratching the back of his head. If he’s honest with himself, he’s still kind of thinking about getting fucked on that kitchen table.

“Do you…” He starts to say, but he can’t get the sentence to go anywhere. It gets stuck halfway up his throat, and he chokes on what would have been another lie. Looking over at Pete nervously, Brendon clears his throat, and tries again. “I… fuck. I haven’t exactly been telling you the truth.”

That gets Pete’s attention. He looks away from the TV, one eyebrow already raised, and says, “Okay, don’t freak me out.”

“Sorry, I didn’t - it’s not, like, cancer or anything,” Brendon manages awkwardly, laughing through a groan as he rubs the palm of one hand over his face. If he could say this to Sarah with a straight face, then he can tell Pete, too. Especially after tonight. Ryan deserves that much. Brendon exhales quickly, fingers still dragging down over his face, and says, “I hit Ryan with my car.”

Both of Pete’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. It’s almost comical: there’s a corresponding thump on the carpet as he drops his phone, and it hits the ground between his feet. Brendon suddenly feels like he’s doomed to carry bags of rocks for the rest of his life. He’s so nervous he doesn’t think that he could stand up from the chair if he tried.

“What?!” Pete finally blurts, eyes wide, as a look of terror and realization drapes across his face like velvet theatre curtains. “I don’t want to know. If you killed someone with your car, I don’t want to know - you hit _Ryan_?!”

For a split second, he can see what Pete’s imagining - Brendon behind the wheel, mowing Ryan down off a sidewalk after ten years of careful planning.

“Not on purpose,” Brendon clarifies. “I didn’t - it wasn’t in a murder way. I rear ended him on my way back from Venice Beach.”

Frowning, Pete finally seems to snap back into motion. He grimaces at Brendon and says, “Well. Murder probably would have been more effective.”

“Hey,” Brendon sighs, rubbing his fingers through the buzzed hair on the side of his head. This is it, he thinks to himself, sadly, as he looks at the sour expression on Pete’s face. This is how it’s going to be every single time. “He didn’t, like, want any of my insurance information or anything, so I just gave him my phone number and my email address, just in case. I felt bad about hitting him, I wasn’t thinking. It was a fucking trip, man.”

Pete frowns, saying, “Yeah, I bet.”

“He emailed me first, and then I emailed back,” Brendon continues, still fidgeting nervously. He can’t look at Pete anymore. Instead, he’s staring at the corner of the coffee table, eyes wide as he concentrates. “We went out to a bar, but he doesn’t drink anymore - he’s in AA. I laughed at him, because fuck, that’s funny… right? I thought it was fucking funny, and he just like, he remembered Scotch is my favorite. I told Sarah about it the other night. Fuck, man.”

He trails off after that because he doesn’t know what else to say. He can’t properly convey the way that Ryan looked at him, the difference that was palpable in the way that he talked and held himself. The familiar darkness just wasn’t there anymore.

“That’s like… a lot of information,” Pete finally says, still looking a little seasick. Brendon looks over at him as he asks, “You told Sarah?”

Brendon nods, unable to stop his fingers from nervously fidgeting with the armrest of the couch.

“I told her,” He confirms, taking a short, deep breath before he adds, “It’s like - it’s romantic, I think.”

That admission sends Pete from zero to sixty again. He looks a little green, and has his full worried dad face on as he says, “I’m not, like. I don’t want to be bad vibes or whatever - but that’s a terrible idea, man. Don’t do that. Don’t do that.”

“I have to. I am. I think I am,” Brendon replies, sounding a little mystified himself as he stares back at Pete.

It’s pretty obvious that Brendon’s unhinged, stuttering reply did not flip the coin for Pete in the way Brendon would have wanted. He still looks uncomfortable, frowning at Brendon as he considers everything.

“You sang No Scrubs at karaoke two weeks after he left,” Pete says finally, and Brendon cringes, already knowing which memory Pete has chosen to load up and roll out. “You started crying right in the middle. It wasn’t even Waterfalls, man. You were heavy.”

Fuck, Brendon thinks to himself, as he thinks about the night Pete is talking about. He remembers parts of it, at least - after the karaoke incident, he’d taken pity on himself and thrown back three shots of tequila, one right after the other. Not too long after he’d been certified blackout. That was a bad night, looking back. That was a few weeks before he met up with Sarah again - he probably had no business being out and singing pop songs by himself in the first place.

“I remember,” Brendon admits. He pauses, debating with himself whether he should say the words that are on the tip of his tongue, and then adds, “I remember when you used to go out on stage with Bebe too drunk to stand up, too. Man, you would just stare at the ground like you wished it would finally take pity and swallow you up.”

Pete frowns at that. Brendon says the words softly, not unkindly, and he can see them sinking into Pete now. He quickly realizes that he’s not only struck a nerve, but he’s also given something Pete to directly relate to.

“Yeah,” Pete finally sighs, rubbing a hand over his face as he leans back onto the couch. He eyes Brendon warily from between his fingers and admits, “I do remember that.”

It wasn’t an easy time to forget. By that point, Brendon had managed to lick the majority of his wounds, though he couldn’t shake the saltiness that dripped from his mouth wherever Ryan was concerned. They’d had Patrick out on tour at the time, he’d been opening for them with his solo record, which perfectly rode the line between ‘commercial success’ and ‘commercial failure.’

Every now and then Brendon would get an update on Pete’s general existence, but it was never from Ashlee, and never from Patrick. Usually word would come through from someone in the grey zone, like Gabe or Travie.

 _He’s not doing well, man_ , people would say, and Brendon would look over at Patrick, genuinely happy for what seemed like the first time in his life. Pete had been a massive weight holding him down, and to see Patrick float like that - finally, after everything - made Brendon proud. Pete, on the other hand, had maintained a particularly low and hard downswing that entire summer. After the final split from Patrick and the divorce from Ashlee, not even Ryan - party fiend, and Pete’s right hand man - had stuck around to see the inevitable crash.

That was the first time Pete had been alone in his entire life, and he had derailed, hard.

It hadn’t been that different from Brendon, in those dark moments before he met Sarah.

“He’s my compass, dude,” Brendon finally manages to say. If nobody else understands, Pete has to. “He’s my sour pinata.”

That makes Pete laugh, so Brendon smiles.

“Don’t use that compass shit on me,” Pete groans, still laughing a little as he rubs his hands over his face again. “Don’t use Patrick on me. Fuck, Patrick is going to be so pissed. He’s going to yell at you. He’s going to yell at _me_.”

Yeah, Pete is probably not wrong there. Patrick will be one of the harder sells.

“I’ll talk to Patrick - but you? You’re not mad?” Brendon asks, curiously.

Leaning over, Pete picks his iPhone up off of the floor and sets it down on the coffee table. He clicks the power button, lighting up the screen for a split second, just long enough to see the photo he’s set as his background. Another one of Patrick,this time doing something stupid. He seems to genuinely consider his words before he answers, which is not exactly a characteristic that Pete exercises often.

“No,” He sighs, finally. Brendon feels his chest loosen a bit. “I think it’s a terrible fucking idea, one that will potentially backfire in your face, but how am I gonna be mad about that? Maybe Ryan has changed, but like, you know… maybe he hasn’t, too. And that dude was a pretty shitty person when I knew him. I still see him around sometimes, but I don’t know him anymore.”

Brendon nods, he understands where Pete is coming from. Brendon knew Ryan best, but Pete knew him second best.

“He’s different,” Brendon murmurs after a moment of quiet. He rolls his bottom lip between his teeth, a nervous habit he has when he can’t smoke. “He grew up.”

Pete offers him a crooked smile and replies, “Guess it had to happen sometime.”

“Funny,” Brendon smirks, choosing not to point out Pete’s toy collection displayed over the TV.

~

Before they go their separate ways, Brendon swears Pete to secrecy.

Realistically, he knows that Pete will likely tell Patrick the second his foot hits the top stair, but Brendon wants to at least feel like he made a valiant effort to try and tell Patrick first. He knows he’s going to have to put on his best sales face over the next few months, and there will be no harder sale to close than Patrick.

As far as Patrick is concerned, Ryan might as well be dead and buried at the bottom of the ocean. And this from the calm, sweet dude who never held a grudge.

It’s a little scary - it’s a steep mountain to climb - but Brendon thinks about what will be waiting for him on the other side.

A few minutes later, as Brendon is curling up on the sofa and dreaming about his own bed, his phone vibrates.

 _things i still hate_ , is all that the message says. Brendon smiles as the next message pops up, and says, _ferris wheels_

He’s about to text back something stupid, like “truffle butter,” when a third, fourth, and fifth message arrives.

_things i’d like to ask you for,_ another pause, and another message, _a real date, tonight_

_wear a suit_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you wanna come find me on tumblr i'm now officially at fuckboy069.tumblr.com!


	12. champagne for my real friends

When Brendon wakes up the next morning, he knows Patrick knows.

He walks down the front hallway cautiously, listening carefully to the loud noises coming from the kitchen. It sounds like someone is committing pan on pan crime, clang after clang ringing out in the air like some kind of poorly planned brass band. Brendon reaches the kitchen doorway, and takes a deep, sobering breath before he steps over the threshold. Steady, he thinks to himself.

Sure enough, Patrick is clanging pots together. He’s kind of rocking the mad scientist look, his usually bright eyes narrowed, and his mouth turned down in a scowl as he measures out three cups of flour into a mixing bowl.

Pete is also noticeably nowhere to be found. That by itself is the marital equivalent of waving the white flag, and means that they were clearly fighting about it at some point.

“Morning,” Brendon says, delicate. He gingerly leans into the room, expecting the worst.

Patrick, however, barely glances up from his mixing bowl. With a frown he mutters back, “Morning.”

“Pete at work?” Brendon continues, trying to make conversation. He needs to feel out how bad this is. He takes a few cautious steps into the heart of the kitchen, ground zero, and adds, “He was up pretty late last night.”

Misstep, Brendon thinks, as Patrick’s frown deepens. He turns his back to Brendon and digs around loudly in the cupboard beside the stove, clearly on the hunt for some kind of cooking device that may or may not exist. Brendon waits patiently, tip-toeing around the kitchen island to slide up onto one of the bar stools opposite Patrick.

“I don’t know where he went,” Patrick finally says, as he turns back around. He looks directly at Brendon and adds, “He said he wanted coffee.”

Brendon nods, and can’t help but frown a bit himself. He waits to see if Patrick is going to say anything, watches as Patrick measures a spoonful of baking soda into a different bowl, and then adds vanilla to a glass bowl full of egg yolks. Brendon wants a cigarette just from looking at all the stress baking Patrick is doing.

“Alright, well. I’m guessing Pete told you,” Brendon finally says, breaking the silence. No point in dragging it out, he thinks, better to rip it off like a band-aid. Brendon brushes a streak of stray flour from the edge of the counter, and looks over at Patrick carefully. “I asked him not to say anything, I wanted to tell you myself.”

Patrick shrugs, still adding various ingredients to his bowl. Brendon smells the banana bread baking in the oven for the first time since he sat down.

“It doesn’t matter,” Patrick finally says. He pushes his glasses back up his nose with the back of his forearm, and then looks across the island pointedly before he adds, “What you’re doing is a mistake.”

Sighing, Brendon leans one elbow against the counter top heavily. Patrick, the man with the biggest heart in the world, and the shortest temper.

“Don’t… don’t jump to conclusions like that,” Brendon finally settles on saying. He sounds more defensive than he meant to. “Trust me. I’m the last person in the world who thought this would happen.”

Patrick lets go of his spatula, and finally gives Brendon his full attention for the first time this morning.

“I’m on your side,” He starts carefully, raising his eyebrows. He leans against the island counter top with both hands, like the words are physically weighing him down. “I understand things are complicated for you right now. I’m not like, trying to discredit any feelings that you have for Ryan, man, I get it, like - _I get that._ But Ryan is not Pete, they’re not even in the same ballpark, and however you think this is going to turn out, it’s not.”

Brendon frowns. He feels his stomach begin to ache as he replies, “That’s a little presumptuous, don’t you think?”

“No,” Patrick says, shortly. He shakes his head and adds, “He used you, and he took from you, and he fucking - he left you.”

Grimacing, Brendon feels a little dam of adrenaline burst in his chest. He pushes away from the counter unsteadily, and answers, “I was there, I remember.”

“Do you? Dude, the only reason he came crawling back is because he couldn’t do it without you,” Patrick continues, squinting his eyes and fully laying in. Brendon wishes he’d passed right by the kitchen and followed Pete to Far Away From Here. “If he had been successful in any capacity, he wouldn’t be here. You know that, right? You _remember_ him, right?”

Just like that, Brendon feels about sixteen years old. There are tears beginning to prickle at the backs of his eyes as he swallows thickly and asks, “Are you done?”

“I don’t even…” Patrick trails off and then shakes his head, reaching for his mixing bowl again. He begins to fold the batter rhythmically, as he grumbles, “I am not even getting started.”

Brendon has to blink his eyes a few times as he tries to get his shit together before he replies.

“People change,” Brendon finally manages to say after a few unsteady moments. Patrick shakes his head emphatically, but doesn’t look up from his mixing bowl. “I know that you’re the burn bridges forever type of person, but you should understand how I feel more than anyone. You haven’t even seen the guy in ten years.”

Patrick lets the spatula clatter into the bowl as he reaches for a dish towel. He begins wiping the damp flour from his hands as he says, “That’s the way I feel, man. I’m sorry. I won’t be your cheerleader in this. And you know what? This is a shitty fucking thing to do to Sarah, on top of _everything else.”_

“Don’t bring Sarah into it,” Brendon grinds out, rubbing his face with one hand. “She knows. I told her last night.”

Grimacing, Patrick tosses the dish towel back down onto the counter, and replies, “She saved you. She single handedly removed your bare ass from the edge of self destruction, and here you are, getting ready to stoke the flames again.”

“I’m sorry,” Brendon shrugs, completely at a loss. He raises his eyebrows and admits, “I don’t know what else to say.”

Patrick shrugs, and it doesn’t seem like either of them have anything else to say, so Brendon goes. He exhales heavily, trying to shake off the negative energy as he walks back down the hallway between the kitchen and the living room. The same hallway he drunkenly staggered down that first night Pete took him in, and the same hallway he’d played tag with Bronx in two days before.

He drags his feet along the hardwood floor, and rubs his cheekbone roughly with one hand.

His belongings are still sitting neatly at the end of the couch, just like they have been for the last two weeks. Brendon ignores the sickly, sinking feeling in his stomach as he packs the few loose items that were floating around: his comb, an extra pair of clean socks. Once he’s all packed he zips his knapsack up and swings it over one shoulder.

Brendon leaves the house quietly, and texts Pete _Gonna head to a hotel for the night, give Patrick some space - sorry dude,_ the second he drops down into the leather drivers seat.

~

After booking a hotel on his phone with his Expedia points, Brendon heads over to Sarah’s house to see James.

She answers the door with a wide smile, lips curved happily, that red lipstick and those perfect eyebrows framing the face Brendon knows so well. They share a quick hug before Brendon heads towards the living room, to where James is sitting on the floor with a basket full of blocks and chewed on plastic farm animals. 

He hangs out with his kid for an hour, then dodges an invitation to stay for dinner before he leaves again, a wad of unopened mail in one hand.

Brendon doesn’t tell Sarah about Pete or Patrick, or that he’s meeting up with Ryan again tonight.

For some reason he just doesn’t have the heart to.

~

The hotel is fine, nice and clean and just like every other Hilton that Brendon has slept in over the course of his career.

Pete texts him back just as he’s throwing his bag on the queen bed.

 _no worries man, remember the front door is always open xo_.

There we go. Everything is fine, Brendon thinks to himself, as he sits down on the foot of the bed and then lets himself fall backwards, arms flopping out on either side, one hand still holding his iPhone lit up with Pete’s text. No reason to start worrying, he adds, as he tries to push away the anxiety beginning to ebb at the bottom of his stomach.

It’s not about Ryan, it’s about Patrick, he assures himself. He also pointedly ignores the potential logistics of the two of them meeting face to face at any point in the near future.

~

At nine on the button, Brendon takes the elevator down to the lobby.

He glances at his reflection as he passes by one of the massive floor to ceiling mirrors set up near the elevator banks. Ryan asked him to wear a suit, but a white button down and suit pants are going to have to do. Brendon hadn’t exactly thought to throw a full suit into his backpack when he’d originally left the house, and now everything is boxed up and ready to be moved at the end of the month.

Brendon steps into the lobby proper, and feels the earth shift underneath his feet when he sees Ryan standing there.

Something in his dinosaur brain is still connected directly to the way he felt the first time he met Ryan. It was one of those memories he would never forget, like watching Sarah walk down the aisle, or seeing James’ face for the first time, smooshed and wet. When he closes his eyes he can put himself back there, just a teenager fresh off the Mormon boat, awkwardly shaking hands with a scrawny, mouse haired Vegas kid. Sometimes Brendon could still feel the way his palm had trembled, skin aching to follow Ryan’s when they’d parted.

Tonight, standing in a wrinkled shirt and pants, Brendon feels like that same teenaged boy all over again.

“Woah, hey,” Brendon greets, unable to stop himself from smiling. They both reach out when Brendon is within striking distance, a quick, tight hug that presses their chests together from belly button to clavicle.

When Ryan steps back, he leaves one hand on the curve of Brendon’s shoulder.

“How’s it going?” Ryan asks, a brief smile as he steps away. He looks good, better than. Brendon doesn’t remember ever seeing him so casually dressed up, so able to fill out a suit jacket and slacks. He looks healthy, tanned and toned and so close that Brendon’s fingers practically ache with the need to reach out and touch something.

Your own personal jesus, Brendon’s brain helpfully supplies.

“Good, man, good,” Brendon smiles, unable to stop himself as he smooths one hand over Ryan’s chest. “Nice suit, by the way.”

Ryan grins, then, slow and sharp, dripping across his face like syrup. He looks like he might veer into bashful territory for all of half a second before he double downs on ‘charming’ and replies, “Thanks. I thought we’d go a little fancier than making out in the sand tonight.”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” Brendon grins, wolfish, and just like that, they’re off to the races.

~

Ryan takes him to a fancy restaurant in West Hollywood.

It’s elegant, but not glitzy. You would never find an ex member of The Hills here. Brendon didn’t catch the name but it’s on a rooftop, high up and overlooking the Sunset Strip. It’s like eating on top of Las Vegas Lite, those familiar golden twinkling lights and neon signs that buzz below a sky that never turns darker than dark blue.

“This is one of my favorite places,” Ryan says, as the waiter brings their drinks over: a virgin mojito, and a beer.

Brendon peeks out over the ledge, the still warm late fall air moving his shirt collar gently against his neck. He nods and smiles, one corner of his mouth curling up as he replies, “It’s fucking beautiful. I didn’t know this was here.”

“My little secret on top of the sun,” Ryan grins back, reaching for his drink, ice cold and covered with condensation.

The last time Brendon was on Sunset proper, he’d thrown up outside of Whisky a Go Go before Spencer got him into a cab. He’d thrown up in the cab, too, but that was something he hadn’t realized until he’d looked at his credit card statement a week later and found a charge for $100 in addition to the standard fare.

“It’s fuckin’ weird, man,” Brendon laughs all of a sudden, shaking his head. Ryan raises his eyebrows and offers a ‘huh?’ expression, so Brendon continues, adding, “The way things change. The way things don’t. I never thought in a million years I’d be sitting here with you on top of a block of bars I frequented for weeks trying to forget you.”

Ryan smiles, warm and twisted, and flickering in the flames of the candlelight.

“You could never forget me,” He teases after a moment, that dry, monotone delivery making Brendon laugh loudly.

~

After dinner they walk down the strip together.

It’s weird, dating an alcoholic. Historically, the majority of Brendon’s dating landscape had included drinking or drinks or bars or beers. It’s a new frontier without the crutch of alcohol.

“Oh my god,” Ryan laughs, as they come to a stop outside of a newish looking karaoke place. This particular location is clearly heavy handed in the ‘embarrassing for everyone’ camp, and has speakers and a TV screen on display for passersby. It makes it really, really easy to gawk at the drunk people making fools of themselves inside.

This particular Australian partygoer is currently rapping the chorus to Super Bass.

Brendon and Ryan stand there, laughing and watching as the girl finishes up the second to last verse of her song, the lyrics and bouncy ball still happily moving along the bottom of the screen despite her early departure from the stage. There’s a pause between songs before a guy stumbles up onto the stage, already laughing and holding a beer, hair in a curly brown halo around his head.

He launches into an old Dandy Warhols song, one hand delicately wrapped around the joint of the mic stand, and the other clutching at the neck of his drink for dear life.

“Come on,” Ryan announces, touching Brendon’s forearm with the back of his hand.

Brendon turns, expecting to see Ryan already a few steps away and heading back down the sidewalk. He doesn’t expect to see Ryan still standing there, one hand held out with an expectant look on his face.

“What are you doing?” Brendon asks, confused. He laughs despite himself.

Ryan raises his eyebrows and makes a ‘come on, stupid’ face. He gives Brendon about two seconds before he laughs and reaches out, grabbing both of Brendon’s hands in his own. Brendon still can’t put two and two together until Ryan actually starts moving, leading them in a slow waltz around the narrow sidewalk. When he realizes what’s happening, he starts laughing immediately. He throws his head back and laughs at the sky as he closes his eyes and follows along, feet carefully shuffling along the dirty pavement.

They get through half of the song - _come on now honey, bring it on, bring it on yeah_ \- before they’re both cracking up too much to continue.

Brendon doesn’t let go of Ryan’s hand as they resume stumbling along the sidewalk together.

~

Ryan’s loft is in Holmby Hills. It’s a bigger, fancier version of the one bedroom Brendon remembers him renting when they were younger. He also remembers the way that Keltie would leave her dance shoes in the middle of the front hall, and all of the prescription bottles Ryan so proudly kept on his coffee table.

The things you pretend not to notice when you’re young and in love.

Brendon wanders through the living room curiously as Ryan flips the lights on and fumbles around in the front hallway. Everything is so intricately Ryan that Brendon immediately feels at ease: dark wood paneled floors, stark white stucco walls, stainless steel fixtures and cow skin rugs. At the end of the living room is a set of floor to ceiling windows that showcase the view, a small park and the sprawling city metropolis rising behind it.

“Do you want some coffee?” Ryan asks, already in the kitchen, positioned behind the counter.

Turning around, hands in his pockets, Brendon nods his head and smiles. He also notices that Ryan’s lost his suit jacket and loosened the collar of his shirt by a few buttons.

“Your house is beautiful,” Brendon says, as Ryan pulls a bag of coffee out of an overhead cabinet and cringes as a measuring cup falls after it, too. “How long have you lived here for?”

Making a face, Ryan opens the coffee bag carefully and answers, “Uhh, almost a year? Not very long, I guess. I have a studio upstairs, that’s where I spend most of my time.”

“No shit,” Brendon grins, starting towards the kitchen area. He leans one hip against the end of the counter Ryan is making the coffee on, and raises his eyebrows. “The genius, back in his natural habitat.”

That makes Ryan blush. He shakes his head and fumbles to turn the coffee maker on, rubbing at the corner of one eye with his pinky finger once the percolator is buzzing. Without realizing it, Brendon has accidentally hit a bruise.

“Maybe, you know, one day,” Ryan shrugs, knotting his eyebrows. He frowns a little and crosses his arms, trying to brush it off.

Something about his reaction fries every single one of Brendon’s synapses. The casual way that Ryan clearly thinks about himself now, the hesitation written all over his face. It’s such a far cry from the version of Ryan that Brendon left behind when they parted - that inability to see the fault in himself, his staunch unwillingness to budge, even for a second - that Brendon’s heart floods with relief.

He takes one step, and then another, and then he’s closing in on Ryan. Brendon wraps his hands around either side of Ryan’s head, the pads of his thumbs resting against Ryan’s cheekbones, and pulls him close, pressing their mouths together tightly. Ryan is surprised, and exhales a sharp laugh through his nose against Brendon’s cheek before he sinks into it with a groan. 

Ryan rests both of his hands on Brendon’s sides and begins the walk backwards, through the open plan that will lead them back into the living room.

There is nothing in Brendon’s head except for Ryan as they make their way through the living room, laughing against one another's mouths as they bump into a floor lamp, and then trip over a forgotten pair of sneakers. Ryan walks into the side of an armchair, and lets go of Brendon’s hip long enough to use one hand to navigate them around the front of the chair. He drops himself down onto the cushion, and pulls Brendon with him by the collar, groaning when Brendon ends up in his lap.

Brendon takes the opportunity to grind his dick down against Ryan’s. He can’t stop himself from doing it again when he gets an electric shock of pleasure pitted deep in his stomach. Starry-eyed, he leans back and looks down at Ryan, who is practically comatose already; head tipped back against the chair, mouth dropped open, eyes glazed, lids low. Brendon groans at that and kisses Ryan as he continues to move, rolling his hips down and grinding against Ryan again to chase that same feeling.

When Brendon pulls back this time, Ryan leans forward to follow him with his mouth. He chases Brendon’s tongue and then kisses down Brendon’s chin and neck, his lips trailing along the front of Brendon’s throat and the warm skin along the inside of his shirt collar. Brendon moves his hand up and grabs onto Ryan’s hair, winding his fingers through the now familiar length, against the curve of Ryan’s skull and scalp.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Brendon chants, out of breath. He grinds his dick down into Ryan’s lap in time to his words until he’s coming, brain fizzling out and then starting back up again with a pop and a bang. He hasn’t come in his pants since he was a teenager.

Ryan is right there, too. He grabs onto Brendon’s waist and sucks at the hollow of Brendon’s throat as he lifts his hips up off the chair, humping Brendon’s ass until he’s coming, too, his fingers twisted into the expensive fabric of Brendon’s dress pants. He comes quietly, eyes screwed shut, teeth pressed firmly against Brendon’s bare skin.

“Holy fuck,” Ryan breathes a moment later, chest heaving as he wraps his arms around Brendon’s middle. He presses his forehead against Brendon’s chest, and tries to calm the battering ram of his heart.

Brendon laughs, because he has to relieve the emotion bubbling up inside his chest somehow. He loosens his fingers in Ryan’s sweaty hair, and presses his open mouth to the same spot instead. He closes his eyes, and feels his body relax.

“Stay here tonight?” Ryan asks after a few moments of silence, voice quiet, muffled by Brendon’s shirt.

Brendon thinks about the empty hotel room he paid for across town, the warm couch at Pete and Patrick’s, and the permanently vacant side of he and Sarah’s marital bed.

“Yeah,” He breathes, inhaling the smell of Ryan’s shampoo selfishly. “Yeah, of course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm on tumblr, http://fuckboy069.tumblr.com


	13. real pain for my sham friends

Brendon wakes up with strips of warm sunlight stretched across the bare skin of his back.

Even when you’re expecting it, it’s always weird to wake up in a bed that isn’t yours. There’s that inevitable moment that happens when you first open your eyes, body full of uncertainty over the unfamiliar ceiling above, and the softer-than-usual sheets below.

Stretching, Brendon presses his face into the pillow, and smiles.

It’s only a few moments until the bed covers beside him begin to move, shifting around to reveal Ryan’s mop of dark hair against the white pillowcase.

Brendon’s smile widens. He feels his heart ignite and begin to thump loudly against his chest. Whatever they had a thousand years ago, whatever they had that first night and last night, it’s all still there, and Brendon’s thudding heart is proof.

“Hey,” He greets, voice low and rough from sleep. The fact that he can’t stop smiling makes him laugh, which turns into embarrassedly tilting his face into his pillow to muffle the sound. He feels like he has full on crazy eyes.

Beside him, however, Ryan is grinning back.

“Morning,” Ryan replies, shifting around until he can push himself up onto one elbow. With his free hand he reaches across the small expanse of mattress that separates their bodies, and wraps his fingers around the back of Brendon’s head. Brendon manages one more pulse of a smile before he’s being tugged forward, and Ryan is gently pressing their mouths together. When the kiss ends, Ryan leaves his hand on the back of Brendon’s head, and adds, voice soft, “Better.”

Laughing, Brendon leans forward again and presses another kiss to Ryan’s mouth, murmuring, “Yeah right,” before he pulls away.

~

Full disclosure: Brendon feels a little walk of shame-y in last night’s dress pants and the too small t-shirt he borrows from Ryan.

“This is what my thirties look like so far,” He announces to the reflection staring back at him from Ryan’s tall hallway mirror.

Behind him, Ryan laughs and jams his feet into a pair of ancient looking sneakers. He leaves the laces done up and tries to work his heels in awkwardly, paying more attention to Brendon looking at himself in the mirror than to what he’s trying to do. When it’s clear his socked foot is going destination nowhere, Ryan finally relents and leans against the closet door with one shoulder so he can stoop down and unknot the lace.

“Doesn’t look bad to me,” Ryan says, finally getting his foot in.

Brendon has to get back to the hotel by eleven o’clock for checkout, lest his meager belongings be unceremoniously thrown out onto the street.

“You sure you don’t mind driving me back to the hotel?” Brendon asks, scratching at the back of his head as he finally turns his back to the mirror and studies Ryan instead. Ryan has one arm in his leather jacket. “I can get a car back if it’s easier.”

Frowning, Ryan shakes his head and slides his other arm into the jacket. Once both arms are in he bounces his shoulders, adjusting the fit. The fit, Brendon decides right there, is delicious.

“I don’t mind at all,” Ryan says, looking at Brendon blankly. He jingles his car keys in his pocket, and adds, “You can buy me a cup of coffee on the way.”

Brendon grins at that, and bites his bottom lip a little before answering, “Alright, alright. I like the sound of that.”

They head down to the underground parkade, where Ryan’s car sits between an unnecessarily souped up coupe and a standard issue Jeep. As Brendon walks around to the passenger seat of Ryan’s car, he realizes with a little flash of red hot embarrassment that Ryan’s bumper is still noticeably dented.

Ryan also notices that Brendon notices.

“I lied,” Ryan grins over the top of the car, sunglasses sitting crookedly on his head. “I don’t know a guy who can pop that out.”

Even though Brendon still feels bad, Ryan blowing his own cover makes him laugh. Brendon finds himself smiling and sneaking little glances over at Ryan as they both get into the car. His lizard brain can’t get past the way Ryan’s fingers wrap comfortably around the leather steering wheel, and how long his legs look all crammed into the footwell and bent at the knee.

As they head out into the real world, they quickly become submerged in the sunshine. For mid-September it’s still hot, hot enough to be pool party in July type weather. Brendon didn’t bring sunglasses with him last night, but successfully manages to dig a spare pair out of the glove compartment anyways. They’re pretty clearly ladies sunglasses - the lens cut makes that immediately apparent - but if Brendon has ever cared less about something, foraying into womens fashion would be it.

Ryan promises him there’s a good coffee place right up the road, and, sure enough, a few blocks later he pulls into a small, already full parking lot. While Ryan idles behind a pastry delivery truck, Brendon runs in and orders their drinks: one black coffee with no sugar, and one black coffee with a packet full of sugar. He also gets two bagels for the road. While they toast, he stands at the pick-up counter nervously, hoping that Ryan still likes the everything kind as much as he used to.

It’s weird, how your brain can fuck with you. Despite all evidence to the contrary, a small part of Brendon still expects Ryan’s car to be gone when he makes it back out to the parking lot.

Brendon pictures himself standing there, a coffee in each hand and a bag full of bagels tucked uselessly under one arm. _You should have known better,_ he’d tell himself, in this funhouse mirror fantasy. _You should have known he’d leave you again._

Funnily enough, he isn’t sure if it’s relief or defeat that he feels when he finds Ryan parked in the exact same spot.

“I got you coffee,” He announces, arriving at Ryan’s open car window. Ryan looks up from his phone, startled, like he’d been expecting the pastry delivery man. When he realizes it’s Brendon, he smiles and reaches for the coffee cup. Brendon wiggles his arm holding the bagel bag, and adds, “And a bagel.”

Ryan sets his coffee in the cup holder and says, “Awesome, thanks,” then reaches across the car to open Brendon’s door.

“I got you the everything one,” Brendon continues, as he drops back into the passenger seat and sets his coffee in the cup holder beside Ryan’s. Both have ‘Branden’ written on the side in black sharpie, which Brendon only just notices. He reaches for his ladies sunglasses, and admits, “I hope that’s okay.”

Smiling, Ryan places an arm along the back of Brendon’s seat as he backs out of his makeshift spot, and replies, “Couldn’t be better.”

~

With half an hour to spare until checkout, Brendon arrives back at his hotel.

Ryan drops him off at the lobby entrance. After a surreptitious kiss over the gearshift, Brendon heads inside, smiling widely at the receptionist and the way she’s ogling his ensemble. The t-shirt is right out of 2007: a glorious violet color that is not only ill fitting, but is also cut with the deepest V Brendon has ever seen in real life.

He gives her a quick wave before breaking out into a jog, and hurries towards the elevators. He has approximately twenty five minutes to shower and remove his luggage from his $400 a night glorified storage locker.

The ride up to his room on the twentieth floor is spent between two well built businessmen on their Blackberries. Somewhere, someone is piping in the elevator music version of ‘Party in the USA.’ Brendon takes his sunglasses off his head and slides between the two men when the bell chimes and the doors pop open to his floor.

He can’t really help the way he continues singing Miley as he makes his way back to his room.

~

“Hey, man,” Pete answers, picking up on the first ring.

Brendon feels nervous for a split second; that moment of impulse where he wonders if he’s doing the right thing.

“Honey bear,” He replies, dropping his voice into a deep baritone. He smiles a little despite himself when Pete starts laughing into the phone. “I just checked out of my hotel.”

There’s a click-fizz as Pete opens something, either a soda or a beer, and says, “Patrick feels bad about what he said.”

“He shouldn’t feel bad,” Brendon sighs, eyeing his backpack sitting awkwardly in the passenger seat of his car. A wrinkled ski lodge pass is still hanging off of one of the zipper pulls; he and Sarah’s anniversary trip three years ago, Colorado. Gorgeous this time of year. “I think I gave him a similar speech when you came crawling back from Bebe. Mine was more Braveheart than Blue Valentine, though.”

Pete laughs again, and slurps at whatever he’s drinking before he replies, “If you want to come back tonight, there’s a box of Chinese food with your name on it.”

“How can I resist that,” Brendon grins, warmth smoothing his voice over like butter.

~

Surprisingly, Ashlee is the one who greets him at the front door when he returns to the Wentz-Stump household.

“Long time no see,” She grins, teasing. As usual she’s a vision straight outta Bel Air: blonde hair piled high on top of her head, her body encased from throat to ankle in tight black gym clothes. One of her manicured hands rests on the Mediterranean style door knob, while the other holds her year old daughter to her hip. “Say hi, Jagger!”

The baby burbles and reaches out with one chubby, grabby hand as Brendon bounces up the front steps, knapsack slung over one shoulder.

“Nice to see you again,” He greets softly, leaning in for a half hug. Ashlee hugs back, and then laughs and pats his shoulder as he pulls away. Brendon smiles down at Ashlee’s daughter, and adds, “She’s beautiful!”

Ashlee smiles and bounces the baby a few times, until the burbles turn into little giggles. Brendon’s heart suddenly aches to hold James; it’s irrational, but he can feel it right there, gnawing away at him from just below the surface.

“We thought you were the delivery man,” Ashlee sing-songs, mostly to the baby as she turns around and holds the door open for Brendon to follow her inside. Her bare feet squeak against the hardwood floors as she heads back towards the kitchen. Brendon sets his backpack at the foot of the stairs before he follows her path through the front foyer to the kitchen.

Inside the kitchen, Bronx is laughing hysterically at something Pete is drawing at the kitchen table. They’ve built a two-man castle of various craft materials: tubs of colored pencils, smelly markers and thick cut construction paper. Bronx is wearing a crown made out of bright yellow construction paper, and Pete’s nails are colored with purple markers.

Patrick is sitting at the island, glasses on as he reads something on his tablet from about six inches away. The heel of his socked foot taps out a rhythm against the bottom rung of the wooden stool.

“Hey guys,” Brendon grins, feeling bashful despite himself as he takes another step into the room.

He feels a little silly admitting it, but he had been nervous about Pete and Patrick’s reactions on the drive back over. Some little part of him had been expecting the full ice out from Patrick, even though - realistically - he knew he’d have to do a lot worse than Ryan Ross to deserve that.

But Patrick seems genuinely happy to see him, smiling as Bronx shouts “Brendon!” in surprise.

“See, man? I told you he’d be back,” Pete says to Bronx, dad voice in full effect as he runs one hand over Bronx’s curly blond hair.

Smiling, Brendon snags the empty chair opposite their castle, and asks, “So, what are we drawing?”

~

Patrick catches him after dinner, as they’re tossing empty takeout containers and stacking dirty plates in the kitchen sink.

“Can we talk real quick?” He asks quietly, snagging Brendon when they’re both behind the kitchen island. On the other side, Bronx and Ashlee are playing with the baby, and Pete is pretending not to eavesdrop on their conversation. Patrick tosses a covert nod in their direction, and then adds, quietly, “Out the back?”

Nodding, Brendon tosses out a pair of used chopsticks, and manages a smile.

“Sure, man,” He replies, scratching the back of his neck nervously.

Patrick’s mouth pulses in a quick smile before he ducks out of the kitchen. After offering a wide-eyed expression in Pete’s direction, Brendon follows his friend, stepping over Bronx’s toys in the adjoined dining room en route to the back patio doors.

Outside, it’s barely twilight. Patrick is chewing one of his thumbnails, and waiting patiently on the brick patio.

“What’s up?” Brendon asks. His voice is softer than the sound the french doors make when he closes them gently.

The nervousness in the pit of Brendon’s stomach melts when Patrick offers him an awkward smile, and says, “I wanted to apologize for my shit talking earlier.”

“No, man, it’s like,” Brendon stumbles over his words, eyebrows knotting. “It’s fine. I totally get it, no apology necessary.”

Patrick frowns and crosses his arms against the mild early fall weather. Chicago Patrick would laugh wildly right now, and probably make some kind of inappropriate joke. California Patrick, however, just grimaces and sits down on the edge of a patio chair.

“I don’t want to be that guy,” Patrick says, squinting his eyes up at Brendon. Sighing, Brendon nods and pulls the patio chair opposite Patrick out. Time for a cigarette, he figures. Patrick looks at him carefully across the patio table, and explains, “And you were right, you know. I should know better than anyone what you’re going through right now.”

Brendon studies the half melted citronella candles decorating the glass table top, and chews his bottom lip before replying, “The funny thing is, you were right too. I remember giving you a similar speech not that long ago.”

“Yeah,” Patrick laughs, relaxing in his chair a little bit. 

That particular moment worthy of reality television had happened at a hotel in Fort Lauderdale, of all places, and involved Patrick finding out about Pete’s newly impending divorce. He’d been on tour with Panic, and had very quickly rebuked his position from the _I’m pretending to be a fortress Pete would never conquer again_ camp.

“I just remember yelling, ‘Think about what you’re doing!’,” Brendon laughs, genuinely amused. He shakes his head and picks up the pack of patio cigarettes he left out here the other night, then puts on a dramatic voice to add, “Think about what you’re doing, Patrick!”

Patrick is laughing, too, clapping his hands together as he leans back in the chair and looks up at the sky.

“Oh man,” He manages, still laughing a little as he ruffles a hand through the hair at the front of his head. “I guess we’re both suckers, then.”

There’s probably something to that, Brendon thinks, as he exhales that delicious first drag of his cigarette.

“Sometimes you just can’t avoid that shit, man. I believe in that stuff now,” Brendon sighs, shrugging one shoulder. He reaches over and drags the hotel branded ashtray towards himself with one finger, and adds, “Soulmates, fuck, all that shit. Without all of the bad stuff, I wouldn’t have Sarah, and I wouldn’t have James. You wouldn’t have Bronx.”

Patrick really seems to consider that, and Brendon knows where that train of thought goes. All of the darkest, bleakest nights, the ones where Brendon couldn’t see a way out. They all spun around in one grey kaleidoscope of bad memories, impossible to forget and too easy to remember. Would Brendon change any of them, if it meant he could go down an alternate path?

“I wouldn’t change anything,” Brendon says, tapping a bit of ash into the glass tray. “Because if you’re supposed to be with someone, everything will turn out the way it’s supposed to.”

They both turn their attention back to the house when one of the doors swings open. Pete’s standing there, looking a little sheepish to be intruding on their conversation.

“Ashlee just left with the kids,” He announces, voice soft as he walks across the patio. “Sorry if I’m interrupting but I would have eavesdropped anyways.”

Brendon laughs as Pete sets three beers onto the patio table. Pete grins down at Patrick as he takes a seat between the two of them, and uses his wedding ring to open one of the bottles.

“Maybe I still have time left,” Patrick jokes dryly, narrowing his eyes at Pete before he looks back over at Brendon.

Grinning, Pete leans back in his chair and crosses one leg over the other. He shoots back, “I’m your perfect match.”

“You guys have always had the angel and devil thing going on,” Brendon grins, taking another drag of his cigarette. He inhales deeply, narrows his eyes, and adds, voice strangled by smoke, “Good cop, bad cop.”

Pete laughs again, and they lapse into a comfortable silence for a few moments, just the sound of traffic driving in the distance, and the neighbor’s water feature bubbling away. They each nurse their beers, and Brendon stubs his cigarette butt out when he’s done.

Of course Pete is the one to break the silence.

“So, like…” He trails off and frowns a little, looking almost pained as he glances over at Brendon and asks, “How’s he doing?”

Despite his best intentions to play it cool, the corner of Brendon’s mouth curls up into a little smile.

“He’s good,” He answers honestly, thumbnail beginning to pick at the label on his beer bottle. “He’s been sober for six months. He looks healthy, you know… all that stuff. He doesn’t talk to Shane anymore.”

Patrick snorts a little under his breath, and says, “That’s too bad.”

“Totally,” Brendon deadpans. The only person who disliked Shane more than Brendon was probably Patrick. “He doesn’t really talk to anyone anymore. Sometimes Ryland, but that’s it. He has a bunch of model friends and shit, I don’t know.”

Sighing, Pete runs a hand through his hair and looks over at Brendon sadly. He asks, “Spencer stopped talking to him too, hey?”

“Oh yeah, Spencer hasn’t…” Shaking his head, Brendon trails off and pauses to burp before he continues, “Spencer talked to him a bit at first, not much, but it was something. He stopped sending his cursory ‘are you still alive?’ texts when he went to rehab.”

Pete makes a ‘eugh’ noise, and then adds, “Fair enough.”

“I’m scared to tell Spencer,” Brendon admits. He nervously chews his lip, then gulps down a few mouthfuls of beer. Once the bottle is back in his lap, he adds, “I gave him so much shit when I found out he was still talking to Ryan after the split. I was an asshole. I was so bitter and… and hurt.”

When Brendon looks up, Pete and Patrick are both looking back across the table at him sadly - like they understand.

“It’s been a long time,” Patrick finally says, softly. “You’re all different now. Spencer is like your brother.”

Brendon nods, twisting at his beer label some more. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he lost Spencer.

“I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse,” He sighs, before throwing back the rest of his beer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for the kudos and comments, I really appreciate it, and I love knowing that people are actually enjoying this - it definitely pushes me to get chapters out faster.
> 
> If you'd like to read more about Pete and Patrick's backstory, my fic titled [XO](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1099128) details the last 10-ish years of their relationship.
> 
> Also you can find me on tumblr [here](http://fuckboy069.tumblr.com)! Come say hi :)


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